Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)/Archive 10

Archive 5

←

Archive 8

Archive 9

Archive 10

Archive 11

Archive 12

→

Archive 14

Forced Mandarin Romanization

I do not see why all articles to do with Chinese proper names should include Chinese Characters or Hanyu Pinyin romanization, unless the romanization serves a particular purpose or adds to the value of the article in some way. After all, this is an English Wiki and not a Mandarin Wiki. If you wish to show your linguistic prowess, Wiki is not the place to do so.

This is my proposed revision:

Encyclopedia entries whose titles are Chinese proper names may include both the Chinese characters and the Hanyu Pinyin representation in the first sentence only if Mandarin romanization helps speakers of English identify the reference and there are no objections to such a romanization within the community involved.Nameless123456 (talk) 02:48, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

railway stations

Some editors argue that all the railway stations in China should use pinyin, even for the places whose titles are different from pinyin, for example Geermu railway station in Golmud and Kashi railway station in Kashgar. They argue that "railway station is not city, it has its own naming system". I don't think so. The current naming convention prescribes that "Railway Station articles should have the city's name..." There is no reason to create a different naming system for the railway station's place name. A railway station should be identical to its place's name. Another issue is the capitalization. The current naming convention requires to capitalize Railway Station, but almost all the station articles lowercase railway station now. I am neutral on this issue. But if we decide to lowercase railway station, we need to change the rule in the convention. Thanks. --Neo-Jay (talk) 18:54, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

See also Talk:Geermu_railway_station Python eggs (talk) 19:20, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Besides, the China railway tickets and ticketing system use pinyin as latin station name officially. Python eggs (talk) 19:22, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

User:Yao Ziyuan gave no evidence at Talk:Geermu railway station except a picture of a board at the station and it may not be very authoritative. Even it does not use a proper pinyin form. Do you want to move Geermu railway station to Ge Er Mu railway station, as the board shows? By Google Search, there are 611 hits for "Golmud railway station", including this article of China Daily and this article of Xinhua News Agency, while there are only 108 hits for "Geermu railway station", many of which are wiki cites. By the way, do you know the proper pinyin of 格尔木 should be Ge'ermu, not Geermu? Again, by Google search, there are 1,310 hits for "Ürümqi railway station" and only 54 hits for "Wulumuqi railway station"; and there are 5,560 hits for "Lhasa railway station" and only 185 hits for "Lasa railway station". It clearly shows which one is the common usage. I noticed that you redirected Lasa railway station to Lhasa railway station at 17:34, 29 June 2006. Do you want to reverse it? As for the ticketing system, please provide evidence. Even if it's true, it does not trump the Common Names Convention. --Neo-Jay (talk) 19:27, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Evidence: File:20080403 7558 P021484.jpg

Besides, I suppose Beijing west railway station should be located at Beijing Xi Railway Station. Python eggs (talk) 20:19, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

The official latin station names could be found in book 《铁路客运运价里程表》 published by China Railway Press, ISBN 9787113032579 Python eggs (talk) 20:21, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

You actually have not answered any of my questions. Do you want to move Lhasa railway station to Lasa railway station? This is English Wikipedia. Why the Chinese tickets should trump the common name convention? --Neo-Jay (talk) 20:25, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I believe Lhasa railway station should be named as Lasa Railway Station. But I will not move it until consensus is made. Python eggs (talk) 20:32, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your respecting the consensus, not just following your personal belief. But we already have consensus in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese): "Railway Station articles should have the city's name..." If you can respect the consensus for Lhasa's railway station (it's you that created Lhasa railway station at 16:46, 29 June 2006), then why not also respect the consensus for Golmud and Kashgar's railway stations? --Neo-Jay (talk) 20:48, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

According to 汉语拼音方案:

a，o，e开头的音节连接在其他音节后面的时候，如果音节的界限发生混淆，用隔音符号（'）隔开，例如： pi'ao（皮袄）。

In case of Geermu, I suppose there's no confuse issue, so ' should not be added. Python eggs (talk) 20:29, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

That's fine. --Neo-Jay (talk) 20:48, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I guess this one bothers me, too. I consistently use "Erenhot" rather than "Erlianhaote", given that "Erenhot" is the correct name in Mongolian (actually known as "Eren" in Mongolia itself). But I was disturbed to find that the Chinese authorities show little respect for the local name. When I was there, I seem to remember the name on the station building being "Erlianhaote" in English.

I find this insensitive and arrogant on the part of the Han Chinese, but there is no use being PC about it if the practice on the ground is to use the pinyin romanisation rather than the correct local name.

Bathrobe (talk) 02:12, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Per the common name convention, we should use the common name for a railway station in all reliable sources in English world including newspaper, publications, websites, etc, not just the train tickets and the boards at the stations. Wikipedia is written for all readers, not just for the actual passengers. Considering all the relevant sources (see the Google Search I made above), I think that the city's name, not its pinyin, should be the title of the railway station.--Neo-Jay (talk) 03:18, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I can talk for all reliable sources in the English world (including newspaper, publications, websites, etc), but a quick google of "erenhot train station" and "erlian train station" reveals the following:

erenhot train station: 3 results

erlian train station: 64 results

erlianhaote railway station: 9 results

erlian railway station: 8 results

Nothing for "eren train station", "eren railway station", "erenhot railway station", etc. Not sure where that leaves us.

Bathrobe (talk) 07:12, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Let us exercise some common sense here. Pinyin is not English. Let me propose a comprehensive solution:

• The standard naming convention is [pinyin(city name)] Railway Station, with Railway Station capitalized. I personally do not have to time to move them all. But for most Chinese railway stations where there is no dispute, it should follow this convention. I.e. Beijing railway station.
• For any railway station attached to a direction', e.g. Beijing West, it should follow the English convention of Beijing West railway station, with West capitalized. It should also have a redirect from Beijing Xi Railway Station for confused users reading off pinyin on their train tickets.
• For any railway stations with an ethnically recognized non-chinese transliterated name by the PRC, such as Urumqi, Hohhot, Golmud, Kashgar, and Harbin, it is simply tedious and unnecessary to make pinyin the standard (for this it is best to use the standards of their government websites), but you can redirect the pinyin entries in the unlikely event that users are searching for these entries from their train tickets (which are in pinyin only).

Some of the railway stations, like Erenhot, is too peculiar to find on the web anyway. Doing a Google search does not justify naming it the Erlianhaote Railway Station. But because train tickets to Erenhot only say "Er lian", then it is useful to have a redirect from Er Lian Railway Station.

That is my take. Colipon+(T) 10:21, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the railway station should use the city's name, not just its pinyin. As for the capitalization, do you support to capitalized Railway Station (your examples still lowercase railway station)? It seems that railway stations in the United Kingdom are lowercased (e.g., see this), while the stations in the United States are capitalized (e.g., see this). I don't know which style should be applied to China. I hope we can come to some consensus. Thanks. --Neo-Jay (talk) 10:51, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd go with capitalized. It's more formal. Colipon+(T) 05:35, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Requested moves of tai chi chuan-related articles

A number of requested moves of articles related to tai chi chuan, part of Category:T'ai Chi Ch'uan, are being discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Martial arts. (One issue is appropriate pinyin.) Please feel free to join the discussion there if interested. — AjaxSmack 00:57, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

NPOV section is deadlocked?

Could someone let us know what the issues are at the moment? Nothing has been in active discussion for over 6 months. I don't think it is sensible to have a disputed tag over the section for such a long time with no progress: what should we follow? Should we even follow what's currently up there at all?--pyl (talk) 12:33, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

If you had read the archive you would have found the answer for your questions. The issue continues to be the use of the names "China" and "Taiwan". If you speak with someone in the street, read a newspaper, read a dictonary, or whatever about "China" everybody is refering to the current country (official name being: People's Republic of China). This is the current use in the English language.

The same happens with "Taiwan". Almost everybody and everything refers to the country (official name being: Republic of China). IMHO it has more or less the same legal status as Kosovo. This is the current use in the English language.

However "here" in the English Wikipedia the current use of these names in the English language is not respected for dubious reasons (claims of POV). The article "China" is about the Chinese civilization. The article "Taiwan" is about the island. Several users tried to change this but other users disagree. The second group wrote that NPOV section and it conflicts with other policies of Wikipedia. To cut it short: the section (not even speaking about the use of "China" and "Taiwan") continues to be disputed. Flamarande (talk) 12:58, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I went into the archives and I didn't see any recent discussion on anything that you were talking about. I believe the last active discussion was about adding the Republic of China for Taipei City and Kaohsiung City. And that was in January this year. That's why I removed the tags because the proposal wasn't even added into the convention anyway.

If you check the logs, the tag was added by as follows:-

02:43, 20 June 2007 Folic Acid (Talk | contribs) (30,492 bytes) (I think having the POV tag here is warranted - there is a legitimate dispute about this section being discussed on the talk page.

Given that there is no dispute going on and there hasn't been for 6 months, I didn't think the dispute is still ongoing.

What you are saying is a fundamental disagreement with the convention, and that means the whole section is unusable. But it seems to be that the current Chinese-related articles have more or less followed the naming convention. Given the large number of articles, are we going to accept that the current convention is the convention to follow? I am not sure if we want to reopen the can of worms and throw what we have right now into chaos.--pyl (talk) 13:16, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if they have followed this naming convention in particular, as most articles follow the "common usage" of the two names (including the two wiki-taskforces who use "Taiwan" and "China"). The titles of the article are the true apples of discord. The issue is deadlocked but it constantly reappears inside the talkpages of "China", "Taiwan", "People's Republic of China", and "Republic of China" (and will continue to do so until...). It's hard to correct anything of this magnitude and importance when one side provides proper evidence, the other side preaches, and the law enforcers fail to take the correct action. Flamarande (talk) 13:48, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

They do follow the convention, more or less, as far as I can tell. It appears to me that with the two wiki-taskforces at work, they seem to settle at this convention.

That's why I removed the tag, as I see that people are settling down along the lines of the convention and no discussions have been taking place here for a while.

So you still think we should just stick with the convention but leave it as "disputed"?--pyl (talk) 14:07, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Leave the tag, as it is warranted (there is a dispute). Flamarande (talk) 19:39, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

How to refer to civil aviation authorities of the Republic of China

In China Airlines Flight 140 the article refers to civil aviation authorities of the Republic of China. I believe that the use of "ROC aviation authorities" or "Aviation authorities of the ROC" is consistent with the naming conventions guide and the manual of style as civil aviation authorities are parts of the Republic of China government. Another user believes that "Taiwan authorities" should be used, as Taiwan is common way to refer to the ROC. Are there any additional thoughts? WhisperToMe (talk) 20:29, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Either should be fine. SchmuckyTheCat (talk) 20:35, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(Chinese)#Political_NPOV says to use "Republic of China" "When referring to the state in article space after appropriate disambiguation has been given (Do not replace all instances of "Republic of China" with "Republic of China (Taiwan)" unless explicitly part of the official title.)." WhisperToMe (talk) 22:13, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

That said policy is not an official Wikipedia policy. Flamarande (talk) 22:47, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Flamarande: the page says "This page documents an English Wikipedia naming convention. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense and the occasional exception. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page." - While it is not absolute, it's not like one can totally ignore it. You have to justify why it would be not used in a specific scenario. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:54, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

I know what the page/box says, but its factual accuracy is quite doubtful. The official Wikipedia:Naming conventions in particular the 'Use the most easily recognized name' part is clear in this matter: "Generally, article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." 'Taiwan' is more easily recognized by the greatest number of English speakers rather than 'Republic of China'. Flamarande (talk) 23:15, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

"but its factual accuracy is quite doubtful" ? Flamarande, I don't think there is any question of factual accuracy here. There is a reason why we have specific guidelines (like the China conventions); some issues are very complex. I must add that Wikipedia:NPOV is a policy and it trumps the "most common name" where it conflicts. Believe it or not, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China issues are very politically contentious. We, as a community, have decided that in some cases Republic of China is best and, in other cases, Taiwan is best. Please look at the archives. Thd discussion is here Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Chinese)/Archive_8#ROC.2FTaiwan_Naming_Conventions_.28Here_we_go_again....29. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:06, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I must also add from this discussion: - User:Jiang said: "Unlike news articles, we don't need to simplify facts and situations for our audience - we can explain them in their entirety. How do we best educate people? I think the current setup best accomplishes this.-" Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Chinese)/Archive_9#I_humbly_propose_a_change_of_the_.22Political_NPOV.22_section WhisperToMe (talk) 01:17, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Jiang has an agenda that prefers the term ROC and that quote was probably disputed by others, so I don't understand its value to this discussion.

As presented, I don't see any need to prefer either term. If it said ROC authorities, fine. If it said Taiwan authorities, fine. This terminology and arguments about it are usually dependent on political views. Wikipedia guidelines are not going to solve this blue/green naming debate. Taiwan and ROC are functionally equivalent terms most of the time. Changing one to the other without a strong reason is disruptive. You'll have to live with that. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

1. Please do not presume bad faith about other posters. Let's talk about the issues. Jiang's quote is correct in that we do not have to simply things in the manner that many news agencies do.

2. If it wasn't for the "civil aviation authorities" bit, then maybe Taiwan and/or ROC would be interchangeable. However, Schmucky, the "civil aviation authorities" bit is a huge giveaway that we are talking about national government employees. There is no "Taiwan" government - You have the ROC national government, Taiwan Province, Taipei, and Kaohsiung all governing Taiwan.

3. At this rate the "Taiwan/ROC" section is what we have to deal with, and it is our guideline. Let's work with that guideline in mind. WhisperToMe (talk) 21:00, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Be realistic! While Taiwan Province is a nominal political division of the ROC, in terms of government it is quasi-defunct, and that is precisely why the terms "Taiwanese government" or "Taiwanese authorities" are not ambiguous and assumed at all times to mean the ROC government. There is a "Taiwan government" and it is understood to be the ROC government. It is the Taiwan Provincial Government that has to disambiguate itself. The fact that "civil aviation authorities" is of the national level is the precise reason we don't need to be explicit. The MoS/Chinese is there to address political sensitivities. When there isn't, it's back to "use common name". MoS/Taiwan is there to reduce POV/sensitivity/disruptive editing. Oversensitizing something unnecessarily can lead to the same disruptiveness. HkCaGu (talk) 04:13, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I am being realistic. First, the statement does not properly explain "Taiwan Government" because the ROC also covers Kinmen, Matsu, and the Pescadores. It would be like calling the U.S. Government the "Mainland U.S. Government" and therefore neglecting that it also covers Alaska and Hawaii. If the ROC only covered Taiwan, then, yes, you could use "Taiwan government" - But, no, it does not only cover Taiwan, and it also claims an even wider territory and it, to this day, maintains its wide territorial claims. In other words, all you did is prove my point that there is no "Taiwan government." As for imprecise "colloquial" usage of "Taiwan government" - it is not Wikipedia's goal to be colloquial; Wikipedia's goal is to be precise, and more precise than a newspaper or a news site can be. Also, By definition, civil aviation authorities are related to "political sensitivities" as they are members of the national government. Anything national government-related can trigger "political sensitivities." It is not "oversensitizing" to follow this very guideline. Using ROC in this sense follows this guideline as the subject is related to the ROC government, and it is inappropriate to "simplify" things.

Plus, when you describe a "Taiwan Government" in the sense of the national government it follows the Pan-Green point of view that the ROC should rename itself and declare independence. It is not "oversensitive" to be mindful of following NPOV.

WhisperToMe (talk) 07:30, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I don't think you understand the reality, especially of the use of "Taiwan". The best example I can give you is current president Ma Ying-jeou (KMT). He would never say he was running for "President of Taiwan". (A DPP candidate might just say that on purpose.) "President" goes with "ROC". But when he talked about issues, he would say Taiwan this and Taiwan that. People understood he meant more than the island or the province. People in Kinmen and Matsu never criticize every politician that said Taiwan for excluding them. They all understand in some sense they are part of "Taiwan". Saying "Taiwan Department of XXX" is most likely less than appropriate and that's what MOS/Taiwan addresses. Saying "Taiwanese XXX authorities" is not problematic, because there's no sensitivity. If that "authority" is multi-leveled or is at an unclear level, that we need to be more accurate. If there could only be one, then there is no need to be over-accurate. HkCaGu (talk) 08:16, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I understand that a lot of people colloquially use "Taiwan" to refer to the ROC. I understand that, HkCaGu. But not everyone refers to the ROC when saying "Taiwan" - it could mean the island too. I understand that distinguishing what it means is up to context. But why bother? Wikipedia's goal to be precise. Wikipedia is a professional encyclopedia, not a personal blog, a MySpace post, or a simplified news report. There is no "over-accurate." Wikipedia strives for accuracy. - While I haven't heard of people from Kinmen and Matsu criticizing people who use Taiwan from excluding them, there are people who do not want to see "Taiwan" as labeled "independent from China" and the use of "Taiwan government" can imply exactly that. As I have said before, there are times when ROC and Taiwan can be interchangeable. This isn't one of them, as it specifically refers to the national government. As Wikipedia is to be more carefully written than a news article or a blog post, we are to be accurate. WhisperToMe (talk) 08:24, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

'A lot of people colloquially use "Taiwan" to refer to the ROC'? Try rather the overwhelming majority of the English-speaking world (including Encyclopedia Britannica, among other true professional encyclopaedias). Wikipedia isn't a professional encyclopaedia (it never was, and probably never will be). Its writers aren't paid professionals, and most of them aren't experts of the relevant fields. Wikipedia isn't sold in stores.

There are also people who don't want to acknowledge the unilaterally-proclaimed independence of Kosovo. BUT that doesn't mean that the articles of Wikipedia don't use the commonly used and widely accepted country-names. You write: 'There is no over-accurate'. However the country-articles are named Germany (instead of Federal Republic of Germany), France (instead of French Republic), etc. To use the common name of the countries is very common in encyclopaedias.

You wrote that 'there are people who do not want to see "Taiwan" as labeled "independent from China" and the use of "Taiwan government" can imply exactly that'. I'm going to assume that "people" means 'the current government of China'. Wikipedia has to date never bowed before the Chinese government, or censorship in general. That's why the Chinese government (among others) routinely blocks Wikipedia. Are you arguing that Wikipedia should bow down to Chinese censorship like Google and God-knows-how-many companies do? Flamarande (talk) 13:02, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Flamarande, many of those arguments were discussed to the death in previous discussions that I linked to. There were refuted, and it is clear that there is no consensus to change the status quo regarding the PRC and the ROC. You also said: "Wikipedia has to date never bowed before the Chinese government, or censorship in general. That's why the Chinese government (among others) routinely blocks Wikipedia. Are you arguing that Wikipedia should bow down to Chinese censorship like Google and God-knows-how-many companies do?" - Actually using ROC and PRC does not bow down to PRC line - bowing down to the PRC line would be saying that the ROC has an illegitimate claim to China and that Taiwan Province, PRC is truly in effect, something like that. Saying that the aviation safety authorities are from the ROC does not skew Wikipedia towards the PRC line. Also, you said "Its writers aren't paid professionals, and most of them aren't experts of the relevant fields. Wikipedia isn't sold in stores." Flamarande, that is not an acceptable excuse to use unprofessional writing on Wikipedia. We try to be specific and proper in our writing, even though we are anywhere from high school students to retirees to rocket scientists. WhisperToMe (talk) 16:47, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

If the aviation authorities for Taiwan are part of Taiwan's national government, then use "Republic of China" for describing those authorities. On first use be sure to mention that the "Republic of China" is commonly known as "Taiwan". Continue to use "Republic of China" (or "ROC") to describe those authorities.

This has been our convention for a long time. Even though we've never had %100 buy-in this has been the common practice has been acceptable to most editors. Other solutions have been far more contentious. The best solution, simply referring to the country of Taiwan as "Taiwan", will get you into a long drawn out edit war. Readin (talk) 23:01, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

• So, here China Airlines Flight 140 The ROC is not mentioned in the lead (as we are only talking about the place Taiwan), but down in the bottom the aviation authorities are described as of the ROC, which is also known as Taiwan. This should satisfy the guideline, correct? WhisperToMe (talk) 16:36, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Looks good. It wouldn't hurt to point out that China Airlines is an ROC airline, not a PRC airline. The name is very confusing. Readin (talk) 14:09, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Linguistics and related boxes: Please make distinctions

The linguistics box should include the romanizations appliable to the correspondent chinese characters... For instance, in the ROC, we can see IN THE LINGUISTICS BOX both the simplified and the traditional: In the country profile we only see the traditional variant, CAUSE THATS THE OFFICIAL ONE THERE... DPP has its own linguistics box and its own political box, the same applies to some newspapers, TV channels... and so on... Is this a policy or an established guideline? If not, Id like to propose it...Gumuhua (talk) 19:19, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Hello there again: Id like to make a written mention in that 4th point of the naming conventiions to make reference to the Linguistics box, cause I've been looking for some guidelines about this kind of infobox, and found nothing.

My point is that the linguistics box should include the romanizations appliable to the correspondent chinese characters, both in simplified and traditional chinese... For instance, in the ROC, we can see IN THE LINGUISTICS BOX both the simplified and the traditional form, and the appliable transliterations: In the country infobox we only see the traditional variant, CAUSE THATS THE OFFICIAL ONE THERE... DPP has its own linguistics box and its own political party box, where we only see the traditional variant, the same applies to some newspapers, TV channels... and so on...

Im interested in such a move, cause there is no a clear standard.. just today another contributor suggested to undo my reform of the "KMT" page, cause i added a lingustics infobox, with wiktionary links, and erased the simplified fomr FROM THE POLITICAL INFOBOX, where it shouldn't be... If we add simplified to the political party infobox, we should add simplified too to the ROC country infobox, where its not the official script, and well, that makes no sense...

I dunno if I should ask for support, or just unilaterally declare it a new policy... If somebody created that infobox, well, y dont we use it? Gumuhua (talk) 17:18, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Given Wikipedia general principles of using well-known common names when they exist and otherwise calling things what they prefer to be called, as well as the NPOV principle of providing both sides of a dispute, I would suggest the following which I believe is often followed in practice:

The first sentence of the article should provide both simplified and traditional characters (as there are only two character sets we can easily provide all of them) whenever they differ. The preferred characters of the item being referenced should go first (traditional for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, simplified in China (outside HK and Macau), and whatever Singapore uses for Singapore). For romanizations, the first sentence should use whatever romanization is currently preferred, followed by any other common romanizations for the item. In cases where a local government uses one system and the national government uses another, the order should be local first, then national.

The infobox (country profile, person profile, etc.), in the interest of brevity, should provide the character set and romanization listed first in the first sentence.

It is unclear to me what the intended purpose of the linguistic box is, except perhaps to save space in the first sentence when the list of characters and romanizations becomes very long. Or perhaps it provides a nice way to compare the different characters and romanizations by placing them vertically aligned. I suppose we should be clear on the purpose of the linguistics box before setting policy on it.

I do think we need at least some rework on this topic. I noticed (I have to admit I didn't spend a lot of time reading) that the rules for the character sets differ from the rules for the romanization in some ways that don't make sense. We should try to be consistent. Readin (talk) 16:07, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Side note, Singapore uses simplified. Pandacomics (talk) 16:14, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

• Hello there, readin:

1) Agree with the 1st point, but I just prefer to place romanizations and simpl-trad in the linguistics box, cause its collapsable and it classifies the languages used.

2) Ur second point seems to agree with me too, also, using different wording: we dont use simplified in the ROC country infobox, because its no official there, neither in the DPP party infobox, for the same reason.

3) POV: again, I believe it is better to place romanizations and characters into that standarized box, for the amentioned reasons, so readers can know the differences between mandarin, kewen, minnan, and so on...

4) Yup, agree: we certainly need some standardization... thats why I asked for some clearer guidelines.

If a linguistics box is used, I favour putting it on top, not below any other appliable infobox. My reasons: It doesn't occupy much space and its collapsable. I dunno if some other contributors place the linguistics box below the related politics/media/country infobox (IE, the ROC article), because they consider that we r giving some kind of prevalence to simplified, which has no legal status ion the ROC. Just wanted to say that linguistics have nothing to do with politics, or, at least, they shouldn't.

Gumuhua (talk) 16:25, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Hello all, good discussion so far. Might I suggest an alternative solution? Rather than adding a separate linguistics infobox with the various Romanizations, perhaps we can simply use the existing templates at Template:Zh-all, and perhaps modify them to link to Wiktionary. The political infobox can then be used with whichever character form is relevant (traditional in the case of Taiwan / ROC related articles) as you just discussed. -Loren (talk) 05:59, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

UTF8 not allowed?

The guideline states: "Chinese characters on the English Wikipedia should be encoded using HTML entities with Unicode numbers." Is this meant to imply — as it appears to be — that using UTF-8 for Chinese characters is discouraged, so that we shouldn't use "人" directly, but enter something like "人" or "人" in the edit box? 88.233.36.11 (talk) 17:42, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I never noticed that. It's old and out-of-date advice. I removed it. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

China or PRC?

On the PRC article, it's acknowledged that the state is popularly called "China". However, the article uses the acronym PRC rather than China quite a bit, and in at least a couple places it's slightly awkward. Is there any standard WP rule about when to use China vs. PRC when the context unambiguously indicates that they refer to the same thing (as opposed to Chinese civilization or China geographically)? --Cybercobra (talk) 02:28, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

It's probably a result of POV warriors replacing all instances of China with PRC blindly. There is no rule. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

Here

The term "mainland China" is a term which can be used when a comparison is to be made with Taiwan for non-political purposes. Hong Kong and Macau are generally not considered part of Mainland China, though under the jurisdiction of the PRC. Thus, it is more appropriate to write "many tourists from Hong Kong and Taiwan are visiting mainland China" than "many tourists from Hong Kong and Taiwan are visiting China" as the latter could imply that Hong Kong and Taiwan are not part of China. "China proper" is a term used refer to parts of Mainland China except Tibet, Xinjiang, and other regions associated with non-Han ethnicities, but may be seen as controversial by the Chinese.

Also note that there are potential landmines when using the term "Chinese." In particular, some find a distinction between "Chinese" and "Tibetans" or between "Chinese" and "Taiwanese" to be objectionable and the terms "Han Chinese"/"Tibetans" and "Mainland Chinese"/"Taiwanese" are more politically neutral and use will depend on the context. For example, "Mainland Chinese businessmen look forward to meeting their Taiwanese counterparts" is more accurate and acceptable than with the word "Mainland" left out.

Summarily, it is not politically neutral to use "China" when the better term is "PRC". China is a politically disputed and ambiguous term, but the PRC isn't.--pyl (talk) 16:37, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

And what page were those 2 paragraphs gleaned from, just to verify? --Cybercobra (talk) 20:03, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

This article (where this talk page is attached to). Here is the shortcut--pyl (talk) 04:47, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

(1) That policy appears to be disputed (2) That policy relates strictly to ROC+Macau+HK articles. While the PRC article obviously mentions those entities and their relation to the PRC, I fail to see why unrelated (non-politico-geographic) sections would fall under that policy. And away to Talk:People's Republic of China I go so this can be resolved by the community concensus. --Cybercobra (talk) 05:32, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Guidelines for "China" vs. "PRC" usage

Please join the new discussion about Guidelines for "China" vs. "PRC" usage on the People's Republic of China article --Cybercobra (talk) 07:01, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Apostrophes!

There seems to be two schools about apostrophes in "Pinyinized" words. This document currently abides by the Library of Congress's guidlenes, which use an apostrophe "for disambiguation" only, i.e. only where an alternative reading could result without one. Thus, according to them, "Shi Naian" does not need an apostrophe (because Naian can only be divided Nai-an, and not Na-ian in Pinyin). This approach is also followed by some well-known writers (e.g. Timothy Brook in his book on Ming Dynasty, "The Confusions of Pleasure"). However, it seems that the official (or at least semi-official) Pinyin guidelines (as described e.g. here with a link to a Chinese published source), use a somewhat different - and simpler to explain - rule: When a syllable beginning with a, e, or o appears in the middle of a polysyllabic word, it is preceded by an apostrophe. Thus: .... hǎi'ōu (seagull) is two syllables, hǎi-ōu. So according to that rule, we'd have "Shi Nai'an". I personally am in favor of the second approach, and feel that even if we don't adopt it, we should at least mention it in this policy page. Vmenkov (talk) 13:47, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Naming convention for Chinese foods and usages of Wikitionary

I raise the issue to WT:WikiProject China#Naming convention for Chinese foods and usages of Wikitionary. Would you spare a moment to give your thought? Thanks.--Caspian blue 18:27, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Language/Dialect Names

General

Having read the discussion above (two full sections) I see that there is still no consensus on the Chinese languages issue. There are obviously very diverse views on the way Chinese languages/dialects should be named. This has also made it clear that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Of course, the factors involved stretch beyond the boundaries of linguistics, and we must also consider social, political, and cultural factors. This all makes a standardized way of naming Chinese languages extremely difficult.

I once again open the discussion on how to name Chinese language articles. This is not a debate about whether or not they are dialects or languages, or whether or not they should be treated as such. This is a discussion about how to treat the article name.

I don't think that we should even try standardizing descriptions of Chinese speech. There basically are two different classifications that that don't intersect. There is classification by linguistic family and linguists have done a good job at those classifications. There is also the sociological descriptions Chinese give varieties of speech. These aren't consistent and shouldn't be expected to me. A lot will depend on case-by-case situations. For example, if you call "Taiwanese" "Taiwan dialect" you are going to get a flame war, but if you call something "Beijing dialect" I don't think anyone is going to mind. Roadrunner (talk) 16:48, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I am in general agreement that there should be some general guidelines on the article names that should be written coherently into the naming conventions. Right now the section under "Language/dialect NPOV" is not very clear. Here are some principles:

1. Wikipedia should not take a view on whether a form of speech is a language or dialect.
2. Common, English names are preferred, if there is one. Ex. Cantonese should be "Cantonese", not "Guangdonghua" or "Yue"
3. All local languages confined to a city and identified as such should be named "dialect". Ex. Shenyang dialect, not "Shengyang Hua", "Shenyang Chinese" or "Shenyang Mandarin".

We see problems right away - with higher divisions (Wu vs. Wu Chinese vs. Wu (linguistics), Hakka vs. Hakka Chinese vs. Hakka language), and with lower divisions (Shanghainese vs. Shanghai dialect; Wenzhou dialect vs. Wenzhou Chinese; Teochew vs. Teochew dialect).

My proposal is that we treat each disputed case on a case-by-case basis, and for more problematic articles, resolve it on a case-by-case basis, only on grounds of consensus. Principles and standards always have exceptions in every case. I wish to ask all editors to refrain from making any moves on Chinese language-related articles before this discussion concludes.

Right now, for the sake of aggregating discussion into one page, I will enlist some unresolved issues below. I will give each a separate heading for the sake of organization. All views are welcome. Colipon+(T) 23:25, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Rather than principle #3 about the city-languages, I would prefer to see a principle based on mutual intelligibility. When the ways of speaking are mutually intelligible, they are dialects. If not, they are languages. I could see a problem in some pairs of deciding whether two ways of speaking are mutually intelligible, but you've already said we'll have to go case-by-case. Another problem might be where there are three languages such that A is mutually intelligible with B, and B is mutually intelligible with C, but A and C are not. I'm not sure if this is a real problem or not.

With this distinction, we would not say that Cantonese and Taiwanese are dialects of Chinese, but we might say that Taiwanese is a dialect of Min or Minnan (I don't know it well enough to promise my example is accurate). Readin (talk) 23:48, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, we could cheat and use (lect) as a dab for the top-level colloquial categories so we'd get Cantonese (lect), Mandarin (lect), Hakka (lect) etc. It would sidestep the ENTIRE dialect/language question as it identifies something as human speech but without stating views on (official) language/dialect/sociolect/whatever.

Beyond that, we then have the linguistic concepts to deal with, but for those I think we probably agree on Yue, Min, Gan etc or even Yue dialects, Min dialects, Mandarin dialects. And at the next level down we'd have City/Region + dialect, so Shanghai Wu, Taishan Yue/Cantonese, Sichuan Mandarin... Akerbeltz (talk) 00:07, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

"Language" for Hakka etc. is not acceptable because these are all socially dialects (and some are not a single language anyway). "Dialect" is not acceptable for anything that is mutually unintelligible, like Wenzhou. "(linguistics)" is not acceptable because these are not linguistics topics like tone (linguistics) etc. As for 'lect', while technically it fits the bill, it is jargon, and therefore IMO best avoided. But I agree that it's best to consolidate the discussion here. kwami (talk) 00:49, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The questions below would be better answered if we had a full chart showing the current situation. That is, a chart showing where current articles are. (Redirects could be included, but they would probably confuse the situation rather than clarifying it.) E.g.

Cantonese

Standard Cantonese = Guangzhou dialect (socially sanctioned standardised? language)

Cantonese = Cantonese dialects in general (linguistic concept) Notice how badly written this article is, because editors consistently mix material related to "Standard Cantonese" into an article that should be about the Yue dialects of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces)

(Topolects of Cantonese)

Taishanese

etc.

Mandarin

Standard Mandarin = Putonghua (socially and politically sanctioned standardised language)

Mandarin Chinese = Northern and Southwestern Chinese dialects (linguistic concept)

Vernacular Chinese = Baihua (Standard Written Mandarin)

(Topolects of Mandarin)

Beijing dialect, Jin Chinese, Jilu Mandarin (topolects)

etc.

etc.

A lot of these questions can only be properly understood if we have an overall view of the current situation. A lot of work? Yes, but if you are going to present this as a serious topic for discussion, knocking out a few cursory questions off the top of your head is not a good way to start.

Bathrobe (talk) 00:56, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree. The best way is generally to figure out what is going on, what the characteristics of any given problematical entity or entities may be, and then when that is clear it is easier to say that "X sub b is called J by many speakers, but K by some other groups." Frequently one hears the claim that "almost everybody calls it Pekin," or something like that. Such a judgment may have applied at one time (maybe a century ago), but it is no longer true. "World-wide, most people call it Hong Kong" may be true even in the early 21st century, but I suspect that it would be better to be forward looking and name it by the official language of instruction, Xiang Gang," There is no point in nailing new readers to old terminology. Regardless of what its Wikicentric name becomes, the most important thing is a clear indication of its relationship to the other Yue tongues. Maybe a map with a number on the island and a key below that indicates that "77" is the language of roughly x% of the people native to the island, called by names 1, 2, and 3, etc. P0M (talk) 01:39, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The treatment that's been given in American and British English articles is that each language/dialect/accent (Cumbrian dialect, Boston accent, Cockney, American English etc. etc.) is given its own assessment on what its wiki name should be. I believe this can be correctly applied to the Chinese context as long as there is consensus. The way I see it with these language-based articles is that there is no standard and each article is treated on a case-to-case basis, with WP:COMMONNAME being very helpful. Colipon+(T) 01:45, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The big difference is that dialects of English spoken by English speakers usually have common English names that refer to them. Given that nearly all English speakers know almost nothing about many of the languages and dialects of the Chinese language family, you'll have much greater difficulty finding a common English name - there may not be one. Readin (talk) 02:06, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Another consideration is that Western readers may have acquired one odd term for a certain regional language or subset of a regional language, a term like "Swatow" that most Chinese speakers probably do not know. For instance, traveling in Thailand in 1966 I heard Chinese speakers refer to their own speech as something that sounded like "deijou hua," and after I got back to the U.S. it took considerable asking around to decide that they were probably giving their own pronunciation of what in the language of instruction is called "chao zhou hua." So not only is there not a common English word for this tongue, there may be no common Chinese term for it either unless all parties would at least write the name with the same characters. Identifying plants and animals by their common names does not even work reliably in English, so plants sold in the garden stores generally come labeled with their Latin names. Once one has a scientific name, a working out of the identity of some organism in terms of Family, Genus, and species, then it is less problematical to indicate that, e.g., some people call this plant milfoil, while others call it yarrow. I call attention once again to the Chinese language article on this subject. Perhaps the names they use are good enough to supply the primary designations for nodes in a taxonomy of the entire Chinese language. P0M (talk) 04:28, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Good suggestion, bathrobe. If it helps:

There is also the category for Chinese dialects. Colipon+(T) 01:18, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

From your link it's pretty clear that the naming is in a mess.

Actually, without clarifying concepts we will keep going round in circles. The problem with Chinese is this:

First, the term 方言 is conventionally translated as "dialect". In fact, what are called 方言 in Chinese are more often "topolects", i.e., speech characteristic of a particular area or region. Thus we have Beijing-hua, Sichuan-hua, Guangdong-hua, Shanghai-hua, etc. etc., describing the speech of each particular locality.

Larger entities like "Wu dialects" or "Gan dialects", etc. are only very dimly perceived by Chinese speakers. They may be aware that such and such a topolect is similar to such and such a topolect, but since these "dialect groups" have no political or other basis, people only possess a vague idea of a welter of topolects (方言) and little idea how they belong together. "Wu language" or "Wu dialect" is not high in the linguistic consciousness of Chinese people. Instead you will hear of Suzhou dialect, Shanghai dialect, Hangzhou dialect, etc., which people might then tell you are similar to each other. With regard to Sichuanhua, most would find it very strange that this should be classed as belonging to "Mandarin", even though linguistically it is reasonably similar to Beijinghua (although certainly not intelligible to Beijing speakers!). As far as most Chinese speakers are concerned, Sichuanhua isn't even Beifanghua, Sichuan is part of Nanfang!

Cantonese is probably the exception rather than the rule, in that it has a recognised prestige dialect.

So I think the problem here is the tension between popular perceptions among the Chinese, which goes not much higher than the topolect level (except for Cantonese, which is recognised as having a certain status), and the categories and studies that have been carried out by linguists, which have revealed the linguistic picture in much more detail, including the delineation of "languages" such as Wu, Gan, Xiang, etc. Since these are linguistic rather than political or social categories (and the Chinese state is certainly not going to sanction any kind of attempt to heighten cohesiveness within dialect groups because it would have divisive political implications), we have problems describing them. "Dialect" in the sense of "topolect" gets in the way. "Dialect" vs "language" gets in the way. That is the main problem.

Bathrobe (talk) 02:45, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Reading this whole discussion, it makes an excellent case that English terms like "dialect" are poor fits, and that simply using the actual Chinese terms like "hua" and "yu" in the English article names would be simpler and avoid most of the controversy. --JWB (talk) 17:22, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Higher divisions

I would like to point out the article zh:汉语族 which also gives the longer term 漢語語族. This suggests that 語族 or 漢語族 are acceptable and reasonably neutral terms. How do they translate into English? By itself, zh:語族 is linked to Language family. --JWB (talk) 16:03, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Mandarin

Disambiguate? Mandarin Chinese? Mandarin? Mandarin (language)? There are also disputes about connotations of "Mandarin". Is it just Northern Mandarin? Does it include Sichuan mandarin?

Wu, Gan, Jin

Is it Wu, or Wu Chinese or Wu (linguistics)?

Hakka

Is it Hakka, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakka (language)?

Cantonese

Disambiguate with people? Keep?

Xiang

Is it Xiang, Xiang Chinese, or Hunanese?

Min languages

These languages are extremely diverse. There is more than one usage of the word "Hokkien". It can refer to a specific dialect, a group of dialects, or the entire Min language. In addition, do we stick with "Min Dong" or do we opt for "Eastern Min"? What about "Leizhou Min"? Is it Leizhou dialect or Leizhou Min or Leizhou Chinese? Why is it "Longyan Min", but when it comes to Zhanjiang, it beomces "Zhangjiang dialect", not "Zhangjiang Min"? What about Hainanese?

Unless they have a common English name, like Hainanese, our decision was to call them "X Min" if they are separate languages, and "X dialect" if they are not. Case-by-case decision on mutual intelligibility. kwami (talk) 00:51, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Can you link me to the decision? Colipon+(T) 01:03, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the whole thing is a mess. There are articles on Min Nan Taiwanese, and Hokkien, and the relationship between them (especially between Min Nan and Hokkien) is very poorly explained. It is almost as though we have two articles about almost the same thing that are chugging their separate ways without acknowledging each other's existence.

221.222.124.211 (talk) 14:02, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Would welcome suggestions. Colipon+(T) 17:40, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Taiwanese

Very complex situation...

Something to chew on regarding the Taiwanese language: Activists angered by ministry’s use of ‘Minnan’ for Hoklo National Cheng Kung University professor Taiffalo Chiung said the education ministry should call Hoklo ‘Taiyu’ in its curriculum guidelines. Readin (talk) 02:35, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Huizhou

Is it Hui, or Hui (linguistics), or Huizhou Chinese?

Lower divisions

Sichuan

Is it Sichuanese? Sichuan dialect? Sichuanese?

Wenzhou

Is it Wenzhou dialect, or Wenzhou Chinese?

This is not exactly a lower division, and is linguistically a separate language, so 'dialect' is out. Oujiang Chinese is a possibility. Wenzhounese is the dialect of Wenzhou City, and so not a synonym. kwami (talk) 00:53, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Academic results overwhelmingly favour "Wenzhou dialect". See [1]. See also [2] for "Wenzhou Chinese". Most of the latter results aren't even about the language. Plus anyone searching for Wenzhou's language will search under "Wenzhou dialect". "Oujiang Chinese" gets zero results in academic searches.[3] Colipon+(T) 01:05, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Taishan

Is it Taishanese? Toishanese? Hoisanese? Toisanese? What is the most common?

Teochew

Is it Teochew? Teochew language? Teochew dialect? or Chaozhou dialect?

Shantou

Is it Shantou dialect, or Swatow?

Fuzhou

Is it Fuzhou dialect, or Foochow? or Fuzhounese?

Comments on the above list

The easy way out of the problem of what to call all these divisions, and (I believe) the correct solution, is to adopt the naming convention of some authority. That puts the "blame" on some authority, and the editors and writers are then free to mention that each of those names corresponds to several others is use by people from different backgrounds.

The speech of any given Chinese person probably is very clearly either some species of the Min speech centered in Fujian Province, or else it clearly belongs to some other group, But finer differentiations may be difficult to make. Those difficulties may be reflected in differences in opinion among linguists. It would perhaps be useful to the general reader if some of the "dead giveaways" for membership in any of the smaller groups were provided. I'm thinking of things like the substitution of things like the second "t" in "total" by a glottal stop in some versions of American English.

For the sake of the general reader who does not come to Chinese linguistics with a set of established terms, it should work best to have all languages not only follow the authoritative standard but also to follow a systematic naming convention. (Logically, the two should go together anyway.) Then, for the sake of the individuals who have picked up a term like "Suatow," those should be given to keep them from getting lost. Sometimes there are strong ethnic differences that coincide with language. The Kejia (Hakka) speak the language of the same name and have cultural features that set them strongly apart. So it is worth noting these features when they occur. The speakers of a certain area often have their language named after the area in which they live, but that is not always the case. The Kejia speakers are an instance of a language and ethnic group that is not associated with a place of the same name. Working out their spot on the language tree and listing some of the characteristics that differentiate their language from its nearest relatives is probably the only meaningful way to identify the language.P0M (talk) 02:21, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The only problem with that proposal is that there is no authoritative body that assigns "correct" names to these languages, nor do most of these bodies even agree on how to define the existence of these languages. Some academic papers published on Chinese languages make the language's name ambiguous on purpose. We're actually faced with quite the difficult task. We're trying to definitively assign names a bunch of concepts to which academics have not even assigned definitive names for. Colipon+(T) 03:50, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Since the word "dialect" ranges in usage from "topolect" (speech of a certain locality) to independent "language" (if you subscribe to the idea that Wu is a separate language), it struck me that we need a hierarchy of terms. How about:

Standard Mandarin / Standard Cantonese (where a formal standard exists)

xxxx dialect group (e.g., Cantonese dialect group or Yue dialect group; Mandarin dialect group) for the major dialects or "languages" recognised by linguists.

Dialect for topolects.

That would mean moving the current article on Cantonese to "Cantonese dialect group". This would remove the confusion that now reigns between "Standard Cantonese" and "Cantonese". One article would concern Standard Cantonese, a second would cover Cantonese dialect group.

You would have Standard Mandarin, Mandarin dialect group, and Beijing dialect as the three levels. Sichuan dialect and Chengdu dialect are not strictly on the same level, but I can't see any way of disambiguating these so finely.

I realise this only addresses a small part of the issue at hand, in particular the naming of dialects (e.g. Yue or Cantonese?). I'm not sure that the use of geographical names is as big a problem as some make it out to be. The problem is, again, the fact that Chinese 方言 refers to topolects. In English we have no problem saying that Americans speak English, even if they don't live in England :) But in China, because 方言 refers strictly to location and not to language variety, editors (and I would suggest mainly Chinese contributors) seem to be unhappy with the notion of using Cantonese as a name for dialects that are spoken outside Guangdong province. Editors feel driven to point out that a dialect with a geographical name (Cantonese) can actually be spoken in other geographical regions, and that other dialects are spoken in Guangdong province. This is a no-brainer in English, but for those coming from a Chinese-language background seems to be a real problem.

The same goes for "Taiwanese", but with a vengeance, since the issue is one of politics and nationalism. Taiwanese is not a dialect in the linguists' sense since it is a branch of Minnan. But for any person wanting to declare the political separateness of Taiwan, the assertion of the "topolect" (and not just an ordinary topolect, but the topolect of a place that has aspirations to formal independence from China) over dialect group is overwhelming.

I will take the opportunity to repeat here the need to use established English-language names where they are current.

Bathrobe (talk) 06:47, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

It isn't just a matter of Taiwanese independence, it is also a question of common name. I lived in Taiwan. I have spent a lot of time in America interacting with Taiwanese people. But it wasn't until very recently on Wikipedia that I heard or saw the term "Min" or "Minnan" for the language. It just isn't the term English speakers familiar with Taiwan use. Perhaps English speakers who interact with those areas of China that speak Minnan do use the term "Minnan" for the language. But how many English speakers interact with that area of China vs interact with Taiwan? I don't doubt that linguists more commonly use Minnan. But the WP:COMMONNAME in English is "Taiwanese". Readin (talk) 09:22, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

There are defined dialects for most varieties of Chinese, and we can generally go by that. But "Chengdu" is not a dialect: it's a regional accent of the Sichuan (really SW Mandarin) dialect of Mandarin Chinese. If we're only talking about a regional pronunciation that is not a defined dialect, then ideally I don't think we should call it one. (There will of course be fuzzy cases, but many of these are not fuzzy.) Likewise with Wenzhou, which started this debate (on another page), and which is not intelligible to the rest of Wu and therefore sometimes called a language; I don't think we should call anything a dialect if linguists argue it is not a dialect. It's not our job to make such a call, and going by Google hits is IMO not the way to decide. kwami (talk) 07:49, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Your point is taken. Calling a local accent (although often these things go beyond "accents") a "dialect" is probably not a good idea. I wonder what a good alternative would be.

Bathrobe (talk) 08:42, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, if we happen to have an English term for the containing lect, we could base it on that: say "Chengdu Sichuanese", maybe? Or Chengdu Mandarin (probably clearer, and I think already in the naming guidelines). Or even "Chengdu speech", though that could get a bit vague, and might be abused. Or periphrastically, such as "Mandarin as spoken in Chengdu", "Chengdu accent in/of Mandarin", etc. kwami (talk) 09:21, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

It looks like a conflict is brewing between the logical names and the common names. The common names, where they exist, should win.

WP:COMMONNAMES is just one of the highest priorities given in naming conventions, far above logic or consistency. I suggest that the first thing that needs to be done is to list the common English names regardless of whether they are well defined.

• For each common English name that sufficiently identifies a specific topic (whether it be a language, dialect, group of languages), we use that name for the article. Whatever logical or scientific name we later come up with can be included on the page. If two common names exist for the same thing we use the more common.
• If the common name doesn't make sense linguistically, but does make sense by some other standard (perhaps a grouping of languages based on politics or geography), we write an article for it.
• For any common names that are unclear and could mean more than one thing, we have a dab page.

Then we apply whatever logical method you guys come up with (I don't know the domain well enough to be much help) to the remaining topics. Readin (talk) 09:34, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Taiwanese is fine as a common name, but as a common name for what? Taiwanese isn't a dialect of Chinese in the sense we are discussing. We are going to need a linguistically based article on Minnan dialect, but your common name "Taiwanese" doesn't refer to this dialect; it refers to Minnan dialect as spoken in Taiwan. Either you would need to have a redirect from Taiwanese (dialect) to Minnan dialect, making sure that Minnan had a proper section dealing with the features of Taiwanese. Or you could have an article on Taiwanese (dialect) which started out by saying that Taiwanese is a subset of Minnan dialect, perhaps mentioning the distinctive features of Minnan as spoken in Taiwan. But in no way could you have an article that implied Taiwanese was an independent dialect on a par with other accepted linguistic dialects.

01:30, 1 August 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 221.222.124.211 (talk)

By this argument, Cantonese needs to be a dab page, with the language article moving elsewhere. Problem is, there is no elsewhere that people are able to agree on: There is no established English term, and people object that academic terms such as Yue violate WP:Commonname—in fact, there have been several impassioned edit wars to delete all mention of the academic terms. Your conditions are mutually exclusive. Similarly with Hakka: that is clearly the common name in English, but is ambiguous between the language and the people. However, while "Hakka people" is acceptable, there is no acceptable equivalent for the language. kwami (talk) 10:22, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I think it's quite clear when dealing with Chinese languages it is not possible to adhere to strict definitions as defined by linguists or linguistic bodies. Linguists themselves dispute what is called dialect and language. A good case on this is Serbian and Croatian - which are essentially not even dialects but more like just local accents - but are treated as separate languages on Wikipedia nonetheless. I think in moving forward it is best that we let go of the notion that there can be a one-size-fits-all standard. If we call Chengdu dialect Chengdu Mandarin, Mandarin spoken in Chengdu, or mostly accurately, the Chengdu accent, we open the floodgates to about 200-300 changes. Is Ningbo dialect a dialect or accent then? In Wenzhou, there is a different accent (arguably, dialect) in every county, in every district. In much of southern Zhejiang the phonology evolves every 15 km. A lot of this just can never be standardized anyway. So it is best to be practical. I think when there is enough to tip the balance - i.e. with a common name, a generally used academic name, etc. it is best to just call it by that name and worry about the linguistic details in the article. This is why I propose something like "Wenzhou Chinese" should be renamed "Wenzhou dialect", not to be linguistically accurate, but to be practical. Colipon+(T) 15:01, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Bathrobe and Readin. In my view, it is possible to discern general trends with these languages. For example, as you mentioned, Wu, Gan, Xiang etc. are linguistic constructs. They are not widely known by Chinese speakers at all. Yet this should not hinder their presentation as linguistic concepts on Wikipedia. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. You mention that Hakka is a language that has both cultural and ethnic connections - then it deserves its own unique article that explains it as such - whereas articles on Wu and Xiang can be purely about the linguistic classification.

In any case, I would like for this discussion to be centered on article names as much as possible - without rehashing any part of the dialect-language debate that is often overused in these kinds of discussions. I think some names are unambiguously undisputed, and correct me if I'm wrong. For example, I believe "Harbin dialect" has more or less the same meaning whether you are Chinese, not Chinese, linguist, or not linguist, CCP supporter, or Taiwan nationalist. There is no dispute there. Same applies for, say, Qingdao dialect, Jinan dialect, Tianjin dialect, Suzhou dialect, Hangzhou dialect, Chengdu dialect etc. None of these will likely ever become focal points of discussion over the article's name. In this sense, most of these "dialects" have a de-facto standard in [city] dialect. But there are also the articles that will likely always be hotspots of contention between one group or another that desperately deserve "balanced and neutral" names. This proves to be very difficult when all kinds of political, social, cultural, and emotional factors are put into the mix. Consider "Taiwanese" - one of the most problematic terms I have ever encountered editing on here.

In my view there are actually four layers of issues here that always seem to cause problems:

• Dialect vs. Language: Here we ask, is it possible to name a language "X dialect" and then describe in the article that it can be considered a separate spoken language? Should mutual intelligibility be considered in naming the article? This is where we don't know whether to call the Leizhou vernacular "Leizhou Min" "Leizhou dialect" or "Leizhou Chinese".
• Common English terminology: Teochew or Chaozhou dialect? Hokkien, Amoy, Hainanese, Sichuanese, Huananese... no standard exists.
• Disambiguation with "people" and other related concepts: Encountered this with Cantonese vs. Cantonese people, Shanghainese vs. Shanghainese people. Should the language article take precedence over other disambiguation pages?
• Topolect and Group dialects: Some dialects, like "Sichuan dialect", are in reality a diverse group of dialects within themselves. Calling them "dialect" in singular form is therefore seemingly incorrect. But in many cases, like "Wenzhou dialect", the common name for the language does not reflect its linguistic reality.

My impression from reading the discussions above is that the article names generally all boil down to these four basic issues. Colipon+(T) 03:45, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

For the 3rd and 4th issues, I think we can use the Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Languages.2C_both_natural_and_programming as a guide. If the language (or dialect) shares its name with something else - append the word "language" or whatever is appropriate (of course that means we have to decide whether it is a language, dialect, language family, etc.) For a group of dialects, the word "dialect" should be plural meaning we have "Wenzhou dialects" rather than "Wenzhou dialect".

For the question of how to decide if something is a language or dialect, I think both appealing to a single authority and just stating based on mutual intelligibility rules both make sense. In most cases it won't be an issue, and for those where it is we can deal with it case by case. The fact that we will have codified the rule into the naming conventions at this page will make dealing with the issue a lot easier. Readin (talk) 15:10, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

One of the problems with Common English terminology is determine just how common it has to be in order to qualify as "common". 20 years ago when I had my first bubble tea it was introduced to me as "pearl milk tea". Was it the common name? At least one English speaker was using it. I don't know if any other English speakers were drinking it. If I was the only English speaker in the whole world who knew about it, and I called it "pearl milk tea", would that make "pearl milk tea" the common English name? What if there happened to be just one other English guy who drank it and he called it "pearl tea", which would be the common name then? What if there happened to be two other English speakers who knew about it but simply used the Chinese name for the drink; would the Chinese name be the "common English name". Given the obscurity (from the POV of an English speaker) of many of these languages, deciding on a threshold of commonality may be a problem. Readin (talk) 15:16, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Would it be at all possible to codify a "hierarchy" of guidelines?? We basically go down the list? For example, first, we consider common English name; second, if we cannot agree on a common name, we consider practicality and general Chinese usage; if we cannot agree on a most practical name, we then consider academic/linguistic references; then we consider mutual intelligibility; finally, if all of that fails, we consider "unique circumstances" within each article. This would make something like "Shanghainese" unabiguously "Shanghainese" and not "Shanghainese language" or "Shanghai dialect". Colipon+(T) 15:21, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

As we discuss this issue, Colipon is making edits to articles on Chinese dialects, such as this one [4]. I'm not sure what criterion is being used to change Southwestern Mandarin from a "dialect" to a "branch". Does Colipon feel that because people normally speak of "Yunnanese", "Sichuanese" as "dialects" that the sum of several dialects must be a "branch"? Perhaps we should refrain from such editing until we get something sorted out here.

221.222.124.211 (talk) 01:51, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

For that edit I was just trying to be "neutral" by calling it a "branch". I will refrain from making any edits that may be disputed until this matter is resolved. Colipon+(T) 10:25, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I think one thing that we need to do is to do a survey of names to see if we really have an issue. If someone is really interested in creating an English wiki article about every town in Fujian than we'd have a different issue than if we don't. Another issue here is that the politics, sociology, and linguistics likely is different for different speech variations, and trying to create a "one size fits all" situation means that if there is a naming dispute anywhere, there is a naming dispute everywhere. Roadrunner (talk) 19:09, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Languages, both natural and programming

Taken from Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Languages.2C_both_natural_and_programming

Convention: Languages which share their names with some other thing should be suffixed with "language". If the language's name is unique, there is no need for any suffix. For example, English language, but Esperanto.

Language families and groups of languages are pluralized. Thus, Niger-Congo languages rather than 'Niger-Congo language', and Sino-Tibetan languages rather than 'Sino-Tibetan language'.

Programming languages should be disambiguated with the suffix "(programming language)" if the name is not unique enough. For example, VBScript, but Python (programming language).

Rationale and specifics: See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages)

Doesn't work for Chinese, because people can't agree on what defines a 'language'. kwami (talk) 10:25, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

It should work for those topics that we agree are languages. And if we agree that some topics are dialects, it should work for those as well (just replace "language" with "dialect" above). But you are right that it isn't a complete solution in that it doesn't solve that issue of which languages are languages and which are dialects. I put it there as a reference because it should be part of the solution. Readin (talk) 14:56, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

We're not going to agree that any of them are languages, except for Chinese itself. (Or prove me wrong here: I'd be quite happy to use "Cantonese language, Wu language, Hakka language".) kwami (talk)

Well, what names are we currently fine with? Can we all agree on "Suzhou dialect", "Hangzhou dialect", and "Ningbo dialect"? I want to gauge what kind of an article won't be problematic. Colipon+(T) 15:27, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, AFAIK those are all uncontroversial. That's probably true for most of the 'dialects' listed at List of Chinese dialects, apart from those that are accents/"subdialects" (e.g. Chengdu "dialect"). The more difficult problem is with the higher levels: the primary branches of Min and non-Min, and sometimes the 'divisions' of those branches such as Wenzhou which are by intelligibility criteria separate languages. kwami (talk) 20:30, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I think social perception is an extremely important part of a language that is certainly reflected in its name. This is a POV issue, but not one that Wikipedia has an NPOV solution for. Like in the case of Croatian language and Serbian language. Place those in one national entity they become dialects of the same language. When they are two different countries, they become two different languages. They are certainly mutually intelligible. So judging from this it would difficult to establish mutual intelligibility as an overarching standard for article names. Also, the Chengdu debate opens a can of worms for the "accent/dialect" debate, a smaller manifestation of the language/dialect debate. This will get even more complicated. Colipon+(T) 20:37, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Of course social perception and political reality is an extremely important aspect of language. But I think it's also important that Wikipedia should try to present the careful findings of experts and scholars, not merely rehash the vague perceptions of the man in the street. In China, due to historical factors, the "topolect" convention remains dominant in linguistic perception, so much so that the actual linguistic situation is totally obscured. For experts, "Wu" or "Gan" or "Xiang" or "Yue" may seem like legitimate names for legitimate objects of research, but they are pretty much unknown to the vast mass of Chinese who still think in terms of "localities". But if we are happy for Wikipedia to reflect "common perceptions" of linguistic reality in China, we may as well scrap anything that refers to the dialect groups found by linguistic research and plump for a whole heap of anecdotal articles on topolects like "Beijingese", "Taiwanese", "Sichuanese", "Shanghainese", "Suzhou dialect", "Nansha dialect", ad nauseum.

I don't think there is a need to start rehashing the language/dialect debate that Colipon keeps returning to (usually in order to say he doesn't want to discuss it again). There are arguments on both sides. But research exists to indicate that something is there, call it dialect or language, that warrants being identified as some kind of entity. It may not have a standardised dialect, political entity, army, navy, or capital city to its name; it may be only very dimly perceived by people on the ground. But careful research has elucidated things that are not apparent to the perception of the masses and that is what Wikipedia should be trying to present. (If I understand correctly, Wikipedia is supposed to be about presenting human knowledge, not commonly held perceptions right or wrong).

The issues of popular perceptions are fairly well covered at Varieties_of_Chinese.

221.222.124.211 (talk) 02:06, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Right, but what are your suggestions for naming these articles then? If we take both social perception and scholarly works into the context. How do we name? What takes precedent? Colipon+(T) 10:29, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking. What if we called it "speech". Like Toishan (speech), Cantonese (speech). Then it is just something coming out of the person's mouth. Is that vague enough? Unlike language and dialect which is systematic. Benjwong (talk) 18:31, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

We could use *popular* dictionaries and textbooks as a starting point. In my experience, there are very few dictionary/textbook resources for "dialects", most are for "languages". Most material for "dialects" tend to be either specialist academic publications or fring, small and not very extensive heritage stuff. For example, taking a glance around the British isles, there's loads of stuff on Gaelic, Scots, English, Cornish, Manx and Irish but very little on Ulster Scots, Yorkshire, Kentish or Brizzle. Of course, this approach can fall over with small and under-resourced languages but I don't think any of the lects we're discussing here are small.

So the question would be are there popular Cantonese textbooks/dictionaries" if yes > language, if no, dialect or subdialect (for example, there might be a books/dictionaries dealing with varieties of Hakks).

A good starting point would be the popular Chinese dictionaries that list non-Madarin pronunciation for each entry, I have one for Cantonese and Hakka, but haven't got one for, say, Taishan Cantonese (> dialect) - nor have I ever seen one. Akerbeltz (talk) 18:39, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

My view is that as long as we have a starting point for what can be considered the "common name", then the rest will fall into place by itself. For example, "Shanghainese" is the common name for Shanghai's dialect. The problem is, like kwami mentioned, a lot of these languages are much too unknown in the English-language world to have a "common name". This is the reason I proposed the "hierarchy" solution above. Colipon+(T) 19:12, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

This is why I say try (speech). It is not political and territorial. Shanghainese (speech), Beifang (speech). There is no sub or main branch like dialects. Benjwong (talk) 19:17, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't that contradict the fact that you can write Cantonese? Akerbeltz (talk) 19:32, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean? Benjwong (talk) 19:35, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

It also ignores the fact that there has been numerous (albeit unsuccessful) attempts to develop alternative written script for Wu dialects, Min dialects (especially Taiwanese), even Gan, Xiang, etc. Colipon+(T) 19:37, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I am not proposing the language term. Never was. I think speech is very generic and that is what these articles are about. The writing thing is totally separate. Benjwong (talk) 19:41, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

So your proposal is that we append "(speech)" for every Chinese language-related article? Colipon+(T) 19:43, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes. It is a generic solution. Benjwong (talk) 19:49, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

So we'd have Cantonese (speech) and Cantonese (writing) but no page which deals with both aspects as most other language pages do? Akerbeltz (talk) 20:38, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

The Arabic situation might be worth using as a reference. Notice, for instance, Maghreb used as a cover term for Western dialects, and individual country articles for Algeria, Morocco, etc.

221.222.123.98 (talk) 03:39, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Cantonese writing practically doesn't exist. Cantonese writing is basically formal mandarin writing. Cantonese speech does not map 1 to 1 to any writing. Benjwong (talk) 07:01, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry Benj but that is the biggest nonsense statement you've ever made ;) Of course cantonese speech maps 1:1 (well, as 1:1 as a logographic system ever gets) onto a writing system. Just open any HK paper and check out the joke section, open a magazine and you'll find pages of advertising in it. My mother never writes her personal letters in "written mandarin" either. Granted, it's not that common in formal publishing but we do have a writing system. Akerbeltz (talk) 12:46, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

PS check Written Cantonese. Akerbeltz (talk) 12:48, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

PPS Or the fact there's a Cantonese Wiki... Akerbeltz (talk) 12:51, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Why do you say it is nonsense? Clearly it is not a formally accepted form of writing. Is practically treated as a tabloid system. You even point out the joke sections of all things. Benjwong (talk) 04:12, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Kwami Bathrobe wrote But if we are happy for Wikipedia to reflect "common perceptions" of linguistic reality in China, we may as well scrap anything that refers to the dialect groups found by linguistic research and plump for a whole heap of anecdotal articles on topolects like "Beijingese", "Taiwanese", "Sichuanese", "Shanghainese", "Suzhou dialect", "Nansha dialect", ad nauseum.

I think Kwami misunderstood what I was saying. Only the article name should reflect the common perceptions. The actual articles should straighten any mistaken ideas. Refer, for example, to the Toad article. It is a common name which doesn't really fit any of the scientific naming conventions. But there is an article for it and the article explains this. For common names that do map well to a scientific name, we use the common name. For example, we have an article on Tiger while the more proper name Panthera tigris redirects to Tiger. And for animals that have no common name, the scientific name is used. A similar naming method can be used for the Sino-Tibetan languages once we figure out how to agree on a "scientific" name. Readin (talk) 15:08, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely agree with Readin. This is what I was saying about Wenzhou dialect. Recognizing that it is probably more than a dialect and perhaps qualifies as a "language", calling the article "Wenzhou dialect" does not unequivocally make Wikipedia's position that Wenzhou speech is a "dialect" and not a "language". You can easily clarify within the body of the article what kind of a concept it really is. Pretty much same idea as Toad and Tiger. Colipon+(T) 23:59, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

It was I who wrote that, not Kwami. And since we're on the topic, "Taiwanese" may be a common name in Taiwan, but "Hokkien" is an equally common name in other quarters, and if you read the articles you'll find they are virtually identical. So what are we going to do in a case like that? Have the article titled "Taiwanese" because some Wikipedians only know that term and not any others?

Bathrobe (talk) 04:19, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, fixed the misattribution Readin (talk) 14:52, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Personally I believe Taiwanese is a very complicated issue that warrants its own discussion outside the realm of this meta-discussion. My view on Taiwanese is that it does deserve a separate article, even if for political reasons alone. This is the reason Croatian and Serbian (and Montenegrin) are all different "languages" and each have their own articles. Colipon+(T) 05:11, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Break on Taiwanese

So we basically discussed for two weeks and there is still no consensus? Colipon+(Talk) 21:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

With the exception of one person, there seems to be a consensus that the name should be based on common usages and that since "Taiwanese" is common usage there should be an article that has "Taiwanese" as a prominent part of the name. Whether that article should cover the entire Minnan group, only the Hokkien subset of the group, or only a dialect of Hokkien, is still a question. It hasn't seen much discussion yet. The good news is that much of the Taiwan related discussion applies to the general topic of languages also. Readin (talk) 21:20, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I would say it would only represent the Taiwanese variant of Hokkien, and I don't think there is much to discuss there. There was never any serious proposals to merge Taiwanese with Hokkien, or for it to represent all of Minnan. So "Taiwanese language" it is? Colipon+(Talk) 21:27, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

If the article is about a dialect of Hokkien or a dialect of Minnan, and if Taiwanese is mutually intelligible with those, then I could support both "Taiwanese language" or "Taiwanese dialect". If it is not mutually intelligible, then I could only support "Taiwanese language". Readin (talk) 21:44, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

There is no doubt that it is mutually intelligible with many variations of Minnan, to varying degrees. Admittedly it is not mutually intelligible with all Min languages. But by the logic presented above "dialect" seems like the right place. Colipon+(Talk) 04:24, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Taiwanese (2)

In respone to Bathrobe's comment about Hokkien, I did some quick googling and found the following results for searches that limited the scope to English websites:

• "Taiwanese dialect" - 36,400
• "Hokkien dialect" - 9,670
• "Taiwanese language" - 33,800
• "Hokkien language" - 19,300

I used the quotes exactly as shown to filter out references to other Taiwanese things or to other languages. When the search results were not limited to English language pages, the results for Hokkien were closer to those for Taiwanese. Readin (talk) 14:48, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I am personally fine with "Taiwanese language" being the title of the article and then just explaining in the article body what it is linguistically. After all most of its native speakers know it as "tai-yu", which is pretty much translated as "Taiwanese language". I do, however, forsee two issues that others will likely bring up:

• What of "Taiwanese mandarin" then?
• Taiwanese is strictly a dialect of Minnan.

Because of this, "Taiwanese Minnan" almost looks like the most NPOV for this article... but this contravenes WP:COMMONNAME, as no one in the world calls the language "Taiwanese Minnan" in that string. This is a very, very difficult issue.

Colipon+(T) 18:15, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

"Taiwanese mandarin" is a different topic. I'm not sure what the question is regarding the Taiwanese/Taiwanese Minnan. I could see a question of whether to call the "Taiwanese mandarin" article "Taiwanese Chinese", but that is a completely different topic.

The first sentence of the "Taiwanese language" article could be "The Taiwanese language is a dialect of Minnan." or perhaps even "Taiwanese is a dialect of Minnan." If "Taiwanese Minnan" is a scholarly term and we have a source for it, the first sentance could be "Taiwanese, more properly Taiwanese Minnan, is a dialect of Minnan." Readin (talk) 18:20, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. What about naming it "Taiwanese (Minnan)". This way it distinguishes itself from "Taiwanese Mandarin" and it doesn't imply that Taiwanese is a language or a dialect, and it conforms with WP:COMMONNAME. Intro should be: "Taiwanese is a regional form of Minnan, a branch of Chinese spoken language. It is widely spoken in Taiwan." After that we can actually just have an entire section dedicated to the name of the language (this is frequently done for articles where the name becomes problematic.. Colipon+(T) 18:27, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

From COMMONNAME: "Where articles have descriptive names, the given name must be neutrally worded." Now, "Taiwanese Minnan" is a descriptive name (it is the Minnan spoken on Taiwan), and it is neutrally worded (it avoids both 'dialect' and 'language'), so I don't see a problem. If it is ever declared a 'language', like Montenegrin, then we can change it to "Taiwanese language". (That said, "Taiwanese (Minnan)" isn't bad, if not my first choice.)

Also, note that Naming conventions state, "Title an article using the most common English language name of a person or thing that is the subject of the article, except where other specific conventions provide otherwise." This guide here is a convention which may provide otherwise: that's its whole purpose. Because the most common English name may cause resentment, there's a need for a dedicated approach to varieties of Chinese. That is, we can decide on any format we want, and if it violates the generic naming conventions, that's fine, as long as we're in basic consensus, consistent, and have it written up. (However, IMO "Taiwanese Minnan" does not violate the generic naming conventions.) kwami (talk) 21:28, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Can we settle for "Taiwanese (Minnan)" then? I hope we agree on the spelling of "Minnan". Colipon+(T) 21:43, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Are we settling on a convention of "dialect (language)"? Readin (talk) 21:44, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

No. This Taiwanese discussion is highly specific and does not set a "precedent" for other articles. Colipon+(T) 21:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Kwami pointed out that the COMMONNAME convention said except where other specific conventions provide otherwise. This exception to the WP:COMMONNAME doesn't apply unless what we are using is a specific convention. Because the most common English name may cause resentment... Is there a convention that says we shouldn't use the common name if it causes resentment? I happen to resent the names of a large number of articles on Wikipedia. Can I get them all changed because of that? Readin (talk) 22:34, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I suspect that by "specific convention" they're referring to things like the convention that says Languages which share their names with some other thing should be suffixed with "language". This is a convention specific to languages. It is used to prevent disambiguation pages for words like "English", "Taiwanese", "Cantonese", where the common name has multiple meanings. Readin (talk) 23:06, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

An anon. IP user pointed out on Talk:Taiwanese Minnan that Taiwanese aboriginal languages can also be called "Taiwanese". Therefore the best solution may indeed by "Taiwanese (Minnan)". I will wait for some more input. If there is no more objections that article will be moved. Colipon+(T) 23:00, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually, that should have the opposite effect: "Taiwanese Minnan" means "Minnan of Taiwan". "Taiwanese (Minnan)" means simply that it's "Taiwanese", which is in greater conflict with "Taiwanese" being aboriginal. kwami (talk) 00:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Any reliable sources or examples of calling a Taiwanese aboriginal language "Taiwanese"? Readin (talk) 23:06, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Not with me, no. You'd have to go ask this anon. editor. Do you oppose the change in article name? Colipon+(T) 23:13, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I oppose the change for a couple reasons. First, the current title "Taiwanese Minnan" is better in that it fits other similar names like American English and Southern English. Second, the "Taiwanese (Minnan)" usage suggests either that Minnan is there to disambiguate or that it is there as an alternate name. While I find "Taiwanese Minnan" tolerable, I don't think it is the best name according to Wikipedia naming conventions. Readin (talk) 23:19, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm getting the feeling that you're making this harder than it is. There is a simple convention that applies. The result may disagree with someone's political philosophy, but sometimes that happens. We have an article on Mainlanders even though according to some, people from China who are in Taiwan are simply "Chinese" and China is not the "mainland" of Taiwan - it is just another place. We have the article because accurate or not, "mainlander" is the common term. We have an article on Native Americans in the United States that talks not about people born in the U.S., but instead talks that portion of U.S. natives whose ancestors were in the U.S. prior to 1492, and we have this article despite the Native American name controversy. We have this article because misleading or not, "Native American" has become the common term.

We don't name articles to fit someone's agenda. We name them to match common usage. Readin (talk) 23:19, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

You misunderstand. I am actually advocating for using common names as much as possible and not worrying about people's hurt feelings. This is the reason I think "Chaozhou dialect" should be at "Teochew" and "Wenzhou Chinese" should be at "Wenzhou dialect". But some users have disputed my definition of "Common name". In this case I believe Taiwanese to be the "common name" for what we have termed "Taiwanese Minnan", which is just not used in any scholarly references nor is it used in everyday speech. The thing with "American English" is that people actually call it such. No one in the world speaking to anyone else would call Taiwanese "Taiwanese Minnan". Can you hear someone asking, "hi. Do you speak Taiwanese Minnan?" "Yes, I do speak Taiwanese Minnan, in fact." No one calls it that. Not scholars doing papers, not common folk chatting after dinner. It's called Hoklo, Hokkien, Taiwanese, Tai-yu, or simply Minnan. Having a name like "Taiwanese (Minnan)" to the article means that we take the position that "Taiwanese" is the most common name ascribed to the language by most people who know about the language and speak it, that it is a sub-branch of Minnan languages, and that "Minnan" is not part of the language's name. Colipon+(T) 23:23, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with the interpretation of "xxxxx (yyyyy)" as "xxxxx is the common namd and it is in the family of yyyyy)" and I think most readers will as well. Can you give any examples where parentheses are used in this manner to show that readers may have an expectation of this usage? I have seen usages of disambiguation and alternate names (both kinds of examples can be seen on the Taurus page - consider USNS Taurus (T-AK-273) and Taurus (constellation)). Readin (talk) 00:45, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Again, what I feel is a misunderstanding of COMMONNAME. Descriptive names are not necessarily used as such in conversation. The reason that they are specifically allowed by the naming conventions is that the common name may be inadequate. "Taiwanese" is, of course, the common name here. The problem is that it is the common name of lots of things; without context, the title does not tell us which. That is why we append "language" after language names: No-one asks "Do you speak English language?" "Yes, I speak English language," yet English language is the name of the article, and no-one argues that is a violation of COMMONNAME. "Taiwanese Minnan" (or "Taiwanese Hokkien", for that matter) is a parallel descriptive name.

Also, I should have worded the conflict differently above. The problem with major Chinese lects is that there are two legitimate POVs, 'language' and 'dialect', and therefore to choose either would be a violation of NPOV. kwami (talk) 01:01, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I totally disagree that Taiwanese is the common name. A Google search certainly doesn't provide adequate proof.

Hokkien is a widespread language amongst overseas Chinese. It is ridiculous to say that they speak Taiwanese, and they themselves would not use this term. On the other hand, even Taiwanese people are aware that their language is the same as that of (part of) Fujian province. That is the homeland of both "Taiwanese" and "Hokkien". People may speak of 台語, but that is akin to calling the English spoken in America "American" or that in Australia "Australian" (which some people do -- Mencken wanted to rename English "Anglo-American").

We have articles on fruits where the same fruit has different names around the world. And the usual arguments from people who say that their country's name for the fruit is the right one. This seems to me similar to the problem of Taiwanese. Since the same language is called different things at different parts of its range, the obvious solution is to find an acceptable name that will cover all uses, with a note at the article saying that this language is commonly known as Taiwanese in Taiwan, Hokkien in Southeast Asia, etc. Insisting that common usage IN TAIWAN takes precedence over everything else is an abuse of the common name principle. Otherwise, we may as well have separate articles on Railway and Railroad, because British English speakers insist that "railway" is the common name and American English speakers insist that "railroad" is the common name -- which is ridiculous.

The problem with Taiwanese is, as I said, that it gives a skewed view of the language. The language should have one overarching name that everyone can agree on, and that name should include the language of the homeland of both Hokkien and Taiwanese. I doubt, Readin, that even your most hardline Taiwanese independence supporter friends would deny that Taiwanese is descended from, closely related to, and mutually intelligible with Minnan.

Bathrobe (talk) 01:25, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Okay, reading thru this discussion is very interesting - the viewpoints that it has brought about. It seems that the four users who have engaged in this discussion, in fact, all have differing views on what to call this problematic tongue. I must say that my position on the issue of Taiwanese is very much open to compromise and I will back whoever's argument seems most logical. As Bathrobe has shown, my own argument that "Taiwanese" is a common name has a few flaws. Readin brings up that having "Minnan" in parentheses is inappropriate and argues it has no established precedent for articles in general. Kwami raises the point that I am perhaps confusing common name with dab pages and descriptive names.

My response to kwami is that "Taiwanese Minnan" in general is not a good name for the article - when we say "English language", we can easily place that concept grammatically in a sentence. For example, one can say, the English language is the most widely spoken language in the world.. Similarly, the French language is often considered the most beautiful of the Romance languages. Conversely, the name "Taiwanese Minnan" cannot be used in a similar context. You cannot say "The Taiwanese Minnan is a language widely spoken in Taiwan".

My response to Bathrobe is that I concede "Taiwanese" is one of a wide range of names used to refer to the language (as I have mentioned above). However, I will maintain that the term "Taiwanese" as it refers to the language has very certainly developed unique cultural and sociolinguistic meanings for the people who speak it, and although linguistically it may be just an extension or division of Hokkien, in terms of the concept itself, it is unique. For example, some vocabulary in "Taiwanese" developed separately in Taiwan in the late 20th Century. This makes the language distinct, at least in some degree, to traditional Hokkien spoken in SE Asia or Fujian. I would argue here that this distinction is enough for "Taiwanese" to have a separate article that is apart from "Hokkien".

As for Readin, I cannot at this moment dig up anything in terms of the parentheses precedents that you are looking for...

With that said, if we cannot agree on "Taiwanese (Minnan)" as a "proper" article name, are there some other alternatives that editors propose? Perhaps "Taiwanese Hokkien"? "Taiwan Minnan"? "Minnan (Taiwan)"? "Hokkien (Taiwanese)"? "Taiwanese (linguistics)"? What is a name we can all agree on? Colipon+(T) 02:34, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Also, this source from the Taiwan (ROC) government seems to say that the language is called "Holo". Adds another couple of layers to the issue if this is the "official" name. Colipon+(T) 02:55, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree that Taiwanese could have its own article, but it still must be related to other varieties of the language.

The problem here is the politics of independence, not the borrowing of some Japanese words, etc. Because Taiwan has developed an identity separate from that of China, the emphasis on a Taiwanese entity separate from both Mainland Minnan and Southeast Asian Hokkien has come about. But "common usage" should not be used as an excuse to support a pro-independence stance, which appears to be happening here. (The POV issue is Taiwanese independence, and as usual Wikipedia easily becomes a battleground. Choice of names should try to steer clear of the independence debate, although that is not going to be easy.) I would ask Readin, who is here asserting on his own say-so that 台語 is the term used in Taiwan, full stop, whether he could check among some of his contacts what the situation is. It is very common in Chinese contexts for a number of separate names to exist. Do his Taiwanese friends know the term Minnan? Do people of the older generation know the term Minnan? What other terms are known? The fact that he himself knows only the term Taiwanese does not necessarily mean that other names are unknown in Taiwan. Moreover, although usage may have solidified behind "Taiwanese" in the past 20-30 years, that does not invalidate older usages with greater depth of history, nor should it invalidate the findings of linguists (essentially that Taiwanese is Minnan/Hokkien with a few largely minor differences).

Bathrobe (talk) 03:27, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

May I suggest that instead of introducing more arguments and counter-arguments, perhaps users can make clear exactly which name (as of now) they think is the best for the article? Colipon+(T) 03:52, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I checked with some Taiwanese contacts of my own. Most of them seem quite ambivalent (they also are more or less politically neutral). They refer to it as "Minnan" most commonly, "Hokkien" more rarely. "Taiwanese" it seems, has different meanings to the different people I asked. Some simply consider it the language that anyone in Taiwan speaks that is not Mandarin... some consider it to be a branch Minnan, others consider it a strict "national language" of Taiwan. Colipon+(T) 03:59, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

In addition to Serbo-Croatian, the following may be interesting: Shouldn't this article include Indonesian?

Bathrobe (talk) 04:04, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

That article on Serbo-Croatian has got to be one of the best linguistics articles on Wikipedia. In fact it may be the best reference on the subject anywhere on the world wide web. Would suggest everyone read it... gives some good food for thought in how to deal with this Minnan-Hokkien-Taiwan mess. Colipon+(T) 04:15, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian only covers one aspect of this sort of issue. Try Norwegian (two standard languages in one country), or articles on Dutch, German, Plattdeutsch, etc. Not to mention Limburgish. How about Hindi-Urdu. Ukrainian and Russian. Dutch and Flemish. How many languages is Mongolian?

Bathrobe (talk) 05:02, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Well whatever the case I am still faithful that we can gradually work to a solution here. Hindi-Urdu is somewhat an opposite case to Chinese languages - they share the spoken form but do not share a writing system... Colipon+(T) 12:47, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

We have a lot of issues here, and to be frank, I'm not totally sure what solution I would suggest.

I, like Readin, tend to baulk at the indiscriminate adoption of Chinese names where English names traditionally exist, and as I've expressed elsewhere, I am also concerned at the uncritical acceptance of Mainland ideological categories and terminology. This doesn't mean that I'm opposed to either Chinese names or Mainland categories, but I am concerned when they are imposed as "orthodox" or more "correct" than other versions, when they in fact often driven by a complex of political and other motivations. It is simply not healthy to adopt one version of reality to the exclusion of others.

For the language/dialect problem, ultimately my preference is to call them languages, but with the proviso the article should spell out VERY clearly that they are not what one might call "fully-fledged languages": native speakers are not necessarily aware of their existence as an entity, they do not usually have a written form or standard dialect, and they tend to be called 方言 or 'topolect' in Chinese. As Colipon has said, the social and political aspects are at least as important as the linguistic aspects. I tend to think that the model of "a national standard language + less standard dialects" is actually an invention of the Europeans and goes hand in hand with the conception of the "nation-state". It doesn't properly apply even to Europe. Most people naively think that Dutch and German are separate languages, whereas they are actually standard languages, developed in two separate states, imposed on the top of a whole bunch of often unintelligible dialects, some of which are dialects of both languages! (which is why I pointed to the articles on Dutch, German, Limburgish, Plattdeutsch, etc.)

So that still leaves the question of what to call these 'languages'.

• For Minnan, my own personal preference is "Hokkien", but that has the disadvantage of being geographically limited (Southeast Asia) and increasingly old-fashioned in English. I oppose "Taiwanese" as a name for the language. That leaves "Minnan" (keeping in mind that there is probably a slight difference in meaning and coverage among these terms).
• For Yue dialects, I prefer "Cantonese", but here you have the problem that "Cantonese" tends to be understood as "Standard Cantonese" as spoken in Guangzhou. Extending it to baihua as spoken in Guangxi province appears to be less acceptable usage to many Chinese. Reasons for this would include the habit of using "topolect" names rather than dialect names, and the fact that even in a case like Cantonese there is resistance to seeing the language in terms of the "standard language ("Cantonese") + non-standard dialects ("Yue dialects" in a broader sense)" model.
• For Mandarin, I think we are lucky to have the word "Mandarin" in English. Chinese doesn't have such a useful term (国语, 普通话, 北方话, 华语, 北京话, 官话, etc., but none of them are quite as broad and generally malleable as "Mandarin" in English. So "Southwest Mandarin" is acceptable in English in a way that is more difficult for Chinese to express. The Chinese Wikipedia article has these: 西南官话，北方方言西南次方言、上江官话或湖广话、四川话! Moreover, my suspicion is that the use of the term 官话 is a result of English influence. (The preceding represents a change from my previous comments).

Bathrobe (talk) 01:49, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

While I agree with you, I find it difficult to gauge your overall position on this issue, Bathrobe. You were just saying that there was independence politics involved with Taiwanese, and now you say that there is PRC chauvinism... I will simply assume that you are doing this all in good faith and not dwell on it. The reason I say Serbo-Croatian is a good example to follow is because they explain the issues very well. A good attempt at similar quality with Chinese is the article on Spoken Chinese. In this article it basically sets out the mutual unintelligible status of various 'dialects' and also talks about the implications of calling everything a "dialect" as opposed to a "language".

I agree there should be no PRC chauvinism, but the problem with that is that the majority of research on Chinese languages is still coming out of China, and no 'foreign' sources have been able to come up with better ways of categorizing. The earliest research that categorizes these languages in their current forms seems to have been conducted under Chiang Kai-shek, not after the founding of the PRC. But whether it is Chiang or Mao that dictated this "language-dialect" scheme, it is still unmistakably political.

I agree that English names should be used when Chinese names are less common and can be avoided. (Teochew, Hokkien, Cantonese, Shanghainese)

With regards to Taiwanese, the only thing we need to decide on right now is the name. I think there are so many factors dealing with Taiwanese that it should be a fully separate discussion from all other Chinese languages. I am fine with calling it "Taiwanese language" so long as someone can prove that the majority of Taiwanese speakers and a reputable third source actually calls it that (although this almost certainly fails at WP:NPOV. Again, political as this name may be, we can always explain in the article itself. I will also remind users that my other suggestion was "Taiwanese (Minnan)", which has been opposed. I also alternatively propose "Taiwanese (Holo)" based on ROC government sources.

There needs to be better organization with Min articles in general. Right now readers get the impression that "Hokkien" is a division of "Minnan", when in fact "Hokkien" can be used to describe Minnan as a whole or all Min languages. This is rather poorly explained and poorly reflected thru current naming schemes. Colipon+(T) 03:30, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

PRC chauvinism: I didn't use this term, you did, and I don't want to dwell on it, either. I'm not sure why you feel that people have take sides between "Taiwanese independence" on the one hand and "PRC chauvinism" (as you call it) on the other in order to be commenting "in good faith". In this case, however, the problem with Mainland categorisation is probably not a major one. My point is that Mainland terminology and analyses should not necessarily regarded as the truth graven in stone. (Check Tai-Kadai for an area where there is a real difference.)

Bathrobe (talk) 03:57, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

My apologies, honestly not my intention to make any judgments on these sensitive issues. In my view you really present very insightful views (like you did on the Han Chinese discussion). So let's get back on topic. Colipon+(T) 04:01, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

In English, Hokkien is a division of Minnan.

I still don't get what the objection to "Taiwanese Minnan" is. (IMO Holo/Hoklo and Taiwanese Hokkien would also be possibilities, though they were objected to the last time we debated this.) kwami (talk) 06:18, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

You need to show some conclusive evidence that "Hokkien" is a division of Minnan. A mere positive statement like that does not convince me that "Hokkien is a division of Minnan" in the English language.

Would you settle for Taiwanese (Holo)? Objections to "Taiwanese Minnan" posted above. Colipon+(T) 14:51, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Some responses to selected statements:

My response to kwami is that "Taiwanese Minnan" in general is not a good name for the article - when we say "English language", we can easily place that concept grammatically in a sentence. For example, one can say, the English language is the most widely spoken language in the world.. Similarly, the French language is often considered the most beautiful of the Romance languages. Conversely, the name "Taiwanese Minnan" cannot be used in a similar context. You cannot say "The Taiwanese Minnan is a language widely spoken in Taiwan".

A better parallel would be "American English". One can easily change "I speak American English" to "I speak Taiwanese Minnan" without suffering any grammatical awkwardness. Readin (talk) 15:00, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I totally disagree that Taiwanese is the common name. A Google search certainly doesn't provide adequate proof.

Google searches are recognized and approved way to gather evidence for common usage. In the absence of other evidence a strong google result is widely accepted as sufficient to decide common usage. If there is other evidence we can certainly consider it. Readin (talk) 15:05, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Hokkien is a widespread language amongst overseas Chinese. It is ridiculous to say that they speak Taiwanese, and they themselves would not use this term. On the other hand, even Taiwanese people are aware that their language is the same as that of (part of) Fujian province. That is the homeland of both "Taiwanese" and "Hokkien". People may speak of 台語, but that is akin to calling the English spoken in America "American" or that in Australia "Australian" (which some people do -- Mencken wanted to rename English "Anglo-American").

Hardly anybody in America normally refers to speaking "American". You occasionally see it in a movie as a device to make the speaker look arrogant or dumb, but you don't hear it in real life. We're talking about "common usage". "English" is the common term. So is "Taiwanese". Arguing that it is more accurate to call "Taiwanese" something else for logical reasons makes as much sense as saying we should rename the "English" article to "Anglo-American" simply because the language isn't limited to England. Whether or not Taiwanese is limited to Taiwan isn't the question. The question is, "What is it most commonly called?". Readin (talk) 15:11, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

My response to Bathrobe is that I concede "Taiwanese" is one of a wide range of names used to refer to the language (as I have mentioned above). However, I will maintain that the term "Taiwanese" as it refers to the language has very certainly developed unique cultural and sociolinguistic meanings for the people who speak it, and although linguistically it may be just an extension or division of Hokkien, in terms of the concept itself, it is unique. For example, some vocabulary in "Taiwanese" developed separately in Taiwan in the late 20th Century. This makes the language distinct, at least in some degree, to traditional Hokkien spoken in SE Asia or Fujian. I would argue here that this distinction is enough for "Taiwanese" to have a separate article that is apart from "Hokkien".

The current article structure has "Taiwanese Minnan" as a branch of "Hokkien". Readin (talk) 15:14, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

My experience has been that Taiwanese speakers themselves say "Taiwanese", not "Taiwanese Minnan", mainladers call it "Taiwan dialect", and southeast Asians see no difference between Taiwanese and Hokkien. Academics generally call it "Taiwanese", "Taiwanese language", "Taiwanese dialect", "Taiwanese Hokkien", "Taiwan Hokkien", "Hoklo", "Holo", "Hokkien". No one calls it "Taiwanese Minnan". Again, with American English, speakers and academics agree on the name "American English". Here, no one agrees on what to call it. In fact I think "Taiwanese Minnan" is almost a Wikipedia invention of a term. Colipon+(T) 15:12, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Google scholar reveals that in academic sources, "Taiwanese language" yields 458 results. "Taiwanese Minnan" yields 58, and most of these are actually instances of 'Taiwanese (Minnan)'. Colipon+(T) 15:17, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

The problem here is the politics of independence, not the borrowing of some Japanese words, etc. Because Taiwan has developed an identity separate from that of China, the emphasis on a Taiwanese entity separate from both Mainland Minnan and Southeast Asian Hokkien has come about. But "common usage" should not be used as an excuse to support a pro-independence stance, which appears to be happening here.

The politics should not be our problem. We're supposed to describe things as they are, not as someone wishes they were. And we are not to shrink from describing things as they are simply because someone wishes they weren't. Again I point you to the Mainlander article whose name clearly reflects a Chinese nationalist point of view and supports the idea that Taiwan is a part of China. But Taiwan independence supports have to put up with it because "Mainlander" is the common name whether or not it is technically accurate or logically correct. For the same reason, Taiwan annexation supporters will just have to live with the fact that people call the language "Taiwanese" at least until they can persuade a majority of English speakers to call it something else.

I don't see how the name actually has anything to do with the issue of independence vs annexation (does having a "Cantonese" language somehow support Canton independence?). But even if it did, the usage is what it is. Readin (talk) 15:23, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I am fine with calling it "Taiwanese language" so long as someone can prove that the majority of Taiwanese speakers and a reputable third source actually calls it that

The standard is what English speakers call it, not what Taiwanese speakers call it. As for "proving" it, that might be ok if we had the option of not giving the article a name. But we have to choose something, and what if no one can find proof for any of the options? In that case we just have to with the best evidence. In American jurisprudence think civil case not criminal case. Readin (talk) 15:31, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I still don't get what the objection to "Taiwanese Minnan" is

My objection to it is that it doesn't fit the naming standard that we use a common name or, in the case where there is a specific guideline, follow the guideline. The common name is "Taiwanese". The guideline, at least for languages, is to append "langauge". Another guideline addresses disambiguation. Candidate names that follow these guidelines would be "Taiwanese", "Taiwanese language", "Taiwanese (language)", "Taiwanese dialect" (this requires extending the language guideline to apply to dialects), "Taiwanese (dialect)".

That said, I think "Taiwanese Minnan" is better than most of the other proposals that have been floating around. One problem that hasn't been talked about is that it may not be recognized by someone looking for information about the Taiwanese language/dialect. Suppose I type in "Taiwanese" as a search term and see results like "Taiwanese people", "Taiwanese culture", "Taiwanese Minnan" - as a typical English speaker nothing there looks like a language article to me.Readin (talk) 15:39, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I pretty much agree with Readin. "Taiwanese" seems to be the common name and it is certainly the name my Taiwanese friends and colleagues use to refer to their own language (personal OR here). I would not mind 'Taiwanese language' or 'Taiwanese (language)' at this point. Colipon+(T) 16:45, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with describing Minnan dialect/language as spoken on Taiwan as "Taiwanese". It's just that "Taiwanese" can't be used as a name for the dialect as a whole (which includes Minnan speakers in China and Southeast Asia). No matter what the Google results are, it is inaccurate and counter to commmon usage to say that "50% of the inhabitants of Fujian province speak Taiwanese" or "One of the main Chinese dialects in S E Asia is Taiwanese". "Taiwanese" is quite simply not common usage in that sense.

Bathrobe (talk) 00:55, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh I absolutely agree. I think the discussion here is purely limited to how to name the Minnan language as spoken on Taiwan. Colipon+(Talk) 01:04, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

As I've said before, I'm no expert on the languages or dialects so I can't say what the scope of the Taiwanese article should be. But there definitely is a language or dialect that goes by that name, and it should have an article. Readin (talk) 01:36, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

As a subdialect or particular variety of Minnan, fine. And such an article should make that very clear. You can't have an article on everything just because "it has a name". For instance, synonyms should have one single article, not two separate articles. Where one is a subcategory of another, the relationship should be made very clear. To do less is to confuse and mislead readers. People should come away from reading an article on "Taiwanese" with a very clear understanding that it is essentially identical to Minnan and Hokkien, but has some special features that are unique to Taiwan.

Bathrobe (talk) 02:30, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

If it is essentially identical to Hokkien and Minnan, do we need three articles, or just one article called "Taiwanese" (since that name is more common than the other two)? Right now the article structure has Taiwanese as a branch of Hokkien and Hokkien as a branch of Min Nan. Is that the correct structure? Readin (talk) 14:33, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes. (There were objections to calling it "Taiwanese Hokkien", I think because there are influences from other varieties of Chinese on Taiwan. But we should perhaps revisit that issue.)

I have no problem with three articles. Minnan is a primary branch of Chinese. Hokkien is the best known dialect of Minnan, so ubiquitous that the entire branch may go by that name, esp. in Chinese. Taiwanese is perhaps on its way to becoming a standardized register of Hokkien. There is also the political divide between Taiwanese and mainland (or SE Asian) Hokkien, which may be relevant. If we merge them, they'd need to go under the name 'Hokkien', but I expect that for Hokkien on Taiwan, people would expect to find 'Taiwanese'. kwami (talk) 23:40, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree with having three articles. But I am a bit skeptical about Hokkien being defined as a "branch of Minnan" and holding it strictly as the "Quanzhou-Zhangzhou dialect". Do you have solid academic sources to back this up, Kwami? Not saying that this isn't true, but I would like to see some reputable sources. Colipon+(Talk) 23:44, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Here's what Ethnologue 16 has to say:

Dialects: Xiamen (Amoy), Leizhou (Lei Hua, Li Hua), Chao-Shan (Choushan, Chaozhou), Hainan (Hainanese, Qiongwen Hua, Wenchang), Longdu, Zhenan Min. Xiamen has subdialects Amoy, Fujian (Fukien, Hokkian, Taiwanese). Amoy is the prestige dialect. Amoy and Taiwanese are easily mutually intelligible. Chao-Shan subdialects: Chaoshou (Chaochow, Chaochow, Teochow, Teochew), Shantou (Swatow). Chao-Shan, including Swatow, has very difficult intelligibility with Amoy; Sanjiang somewhat difficult for other dialect speakers; Hainan quite different from other dialects; Min Nan most widely distributed and influential Min variety. 2 subdialects in Taiwan: Sanso and Chaenzo. Most Min Nan speakers in Thailand use Chaoshou dialect.

Not saying E is always reliable, but they're usually pretty mainstream. Under the Taiwan heading of "Chinese, Min Nan", they have:

Population: 15,000,000 in Taiwan (1997 A. Chang); Dialects: Amoy (Taiwanese); Taiwanese people are called Hoklo or Holo.

kwami (talk) 00:37, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

By the by, this article might be at least as interesting as Serbo-Croatian: Abstand_language.

221.222.121.13 (talk) 03:24, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

In response to kwami. So we can call it "Taiwanese (dialect)", or "Taiwanese dialect", and then just cite ethnologue as our de facto standard? Colipon+(Talk) 00:42, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

There's more to a dialect than being mutually intelligible. E lists Hokkien as a subdialect of Amoy, but Taiwanese as, apparently, just another name for Hokkien. I mean, if Texas split from the US, would that make Texan a 'dialect' separate from Southern US English? Taiwanese is just the Hokkien spoken in Taiwan, which is why the current name is appropriate—I have yet to hear a reason why the current name is not appropriate.

Caution is required w the E. They are a very convenient reference, but are often not the best for any particular language or family. For example, they consider Qiongwen to be a dialect of Minnan, but other classifications draw a stronger distinction, since they aren't mutually intelligible. kwami (talk) 06:35, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I just want to say that I support Kwami's comments here. As I said before, I prefer Hokkien as a name. "Taiwanese" is fine as an article, but only in the sense of Hokkien as spoken in Taiwan, not as a general name for the whole language/dialect.

Bathrobe (talk) 05:29, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Seems like it came down to "Taiwanese dialect" or "Taiwanese language". It's time to make a move. We are going at snails pace here. Colipon+(Talk) 14:14, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

No, both are wrong. It is neither a language nor a dialect. "Taiwanese Hokkien" would be acceptable to me. kwami (talk) 19:45, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

If it is neither a language nor a dialect, then what is it? Readin (talk) 20:43, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

It's two subdialects of Hokkien as spoken in Taiwan. kwami (talk) 23:18, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Kwami, would it at all possible to ask for some clarification on your comments? A statement like No, both are wrong. It is neither a language nor a dialect. without substantiation has almost no value to the discussion. Not all users here are versed linguists, so I would advise we keep these one-liner positive statements to a minimum if possible, and explain ourselves whenever we can. Colipon+(Talk) 04:02, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I thought we had already covered this. A dialect is a form of speech that is markedly distinct, typically in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, but not so distinct as to be unintelligible. Or, a dialect is a form of speech that is socially inferior. Or, that does not have a standardized written form. Etc. But we don't speak of the Nevada and Colorado "dialects" of English--there may be slight local differences in slang etc, but not so much that you'd want to include them in a list of dialects of the English language. "Nevada English" would just be the English spoken in Nevada, with no greater implication than that. If, for argument sake, we accept Minnan as a distinct language, then, according to Ethnologue, Xiamen is a dialect of Minnan, and Fujian is a subdialect of Xiamen. (These names are not very stable, even within Ethnologue.) "Taiwanese" is shorthand for the Fujianese spoken in Taiwan, just as "Nevadese" is the General American spoken in Nevada. In identifying the principal language spoken in Taiwan, Ethnologue identifies it as Minnan (Amoy dialect). Elsewhere is says "2 subdialects in Taiwan: Sanso and Chaenzo"; these are not defined, but presumably mean two subdialects of Fujianese. AFAIK, neither is defined by its location in Taiwan; they are merely two strands of speech that migrated to Taiwan, just as, perhaps, in the north of Nevada a different sub-dialect of GA may be spoken than in the south--subdialects which are also spoken across the border in Utah and California, so that there is no coherent meaning to "Nevada English" other than whatever English happens to be spoken in Nevada. "Taiwanese language" and "Taiwanese dialect" are unjustified for the same reason that "Nevada language" and "Nevada dialect" are unjustified. However, if there is ever a move to establish an official register of Taiwanese, then it would count as a language for the same reason that Serbian and Croatian are considered languages. kwami (talk) 05:22, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Although you disapprove of such "dialect" usages, they're common. Google currently finds 1,610 usages of "Colorado dialect" and 138 of "Nevada dialect", referring both to English and native languages. Keahapana (talk) 20:14, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

But an encyclopedia is supposed to be a source of knowledge, not the lowest common denominator of ignorance. Just because some idiot posted s.t. on a web site, we do not need to copy him.

BTW, if you read the links you gave, you'll see that they describe neither a "Colorado dialect" nor a "Nevada dialect". kwami (talk) 21:25, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't know if I agree. The same argument can be made for animal names. This is the reason lion is at "lion" and not at its latin binomial name. Saying that a somewhat linguistically inaccurate name is a "lowest common denominator of ignorance" is inappropriate - as you can easily just explain the technicalities (i.e. "knowledge") in the article itself. Colipon+(Talk) 22:12, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

BTW, who are you calling "some idiot who posted s.t. on a web site"? The Western Michigan University dialectologist Clyde T. Hankey who wrote "Semantic Features and Eastern Relics in Colorado Dialect"? The Kansas University dialect teacher Paul Meier who founded The International Dialects of English Archive? Keahapana (talk) 02:11, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Since at first glance neither appear to have said what you claim they've said, neither. But you cited nearly 2000 hits. Some of these may be a convenient shorthand, and some may be people who don't know what a "dialect" is, but your argument appears to be that if someone somewhere on the web has used the word "dialect", regardless of whether they know what they're talking about, then we must use it too. Which of course is silly. kwami (talk) 06:41, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Kwami鏡, that would be silly, but that's clearly not what I said. I linked two academic usage examples to challenge your assertion that "we don't speak of the Nevada and Colorado "dialects" of English." You subsequently claimed they "describe neither a "Colorado dialect" nor a "Nevada dialect"", and "Since at first glance neither appear to have said what you claim they've said, neither" [sic]. Perhaps I don't know enough about Wikipedia yet, but I'm surprised that an admin would engage in "idiot" calling over the semantics of "dialect". I apologize if I've offended you. I was simply trying to point out that if members of the American Dialect Society write about "Colorado dialect" and "Nevada dialect", you might be wrong to label them "unjustified". Keahapana (talk) 23:42, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I may well be wrong—it would hardly be the first time (and no, you have not offended me), but glancing over those refs, although they may use the word 'dialect' in the title, they do not appear to claim that these are actually dialects in any linguistic sense. In fact, they appear to hold the opposite, that there are various dialects within Nevada and Colorado, which do not stop at state boundaries, so that there is no coherent "Nevada dialect" or "Colorado dialect". So these titles would appear to fall in the "convenient shorthand" category. That's fine for the ADS, where they can use the phrase "Nevada dialect" and expect their audience to understand that they don't mean literally what they say, but I would argue that we shouldn't be so sloppy: we cannot expect our audience to know what a dialect is, and therefore IMO should only use it to mean 'dialect'. For the converse, take African languages: these are often called "dialects" by people who consider them primitive. But I would argue that, even if this is common usage, we should not use the phrase "Lingala dialect", because it perpetuates a misconception. If in the title of an article, we identify something as a dialect, then it should actually be a dialect, except in exceptional cases where "dialect" is an inherent part of the name. kwami (talk) 00:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I also just read the two articles in English and Chinese. Nowhere does it actually say Taiwanese is supposedly "two-subdialects" of Minnan. I have only heard of this description on this forum. If that is the case then maybe it should be made clear in the article. On the Chinese article Taiwanese is titled 'Taiwan-hua' (speech as spoken in Taiwan). The Chinese article also has a special section for the name of the language - listing all the names that has been assigned to the language and giving a bit of background. I honestly do not think we need to be so pedantic and caught up in the technicalities here. Colipon+(Talk) 22:34, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

But we shouldn't tell lies. That seems so obvious to me that I don't understand why we are even having this discussion. "Lion" is appropriate for Panthera leo because it does not mislead people. But "lion" is also the common name of other cats, such as the puma/cougar; we don't give them all the title "lion" because that *would* mislead people. If s.t. is not a dialect, it is dishonest for us to call it a dialect, unless that phrasing is so universal as to be unavoidable. That is not the case here: it is merely called "Taiwanese" in English. Since we aren't using that name, we should choose s.t. that isn't false. Otherwise, we might as well call Venus a "star", a whale a "fish", and coral a "plant". Just because these are, or have been, common usage, and some people are too ignorant to know the difference, is no reason for us to perpetuate the falsehood--in fact just the opposite, it's reason for us, as a reference work, to counteract the ignorance. Anyway, unless s.o. has a rational suggestion that would be appropriate for a work of reference, I'm done here. Anything with "language" or "dialect" in it is inherently false and therefore unacceptable. kwami (talk) 23:07, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Leaving a discussion just because a consensus hasn't been reached is not at all conducive to making this easier. If we cannot reach a consensus then it would be best to go for WP:3O, WP:NPOV/N etc. If Wikipedia were to present articles in a purely linguistic point of view, then I would say that you are correct; we should label dialects dialects, and languages languages. But this is clearly not the case. If you have a reliable source that says Taiwanese is two subdialects of Hokkien, then present it. I am open to all suggestions. Please do not just shut down a discussion and say "This is incorrect and therefore unacceptable". We all realize that this is a very problematic issue and working towards a conclusion here. "Taiwanese Minnan" is a name not used by anyone - not by scholars, not by common folk, not by media, not by any government, not even by linguistic classifiers. That's what makes the name "Taiwanese Minnan" unacceptable. As it stands the status quo is just not in line with common sense. No one doing research or generally interested in the subject would ever go online to look for a concept called "Taiwanese Minnan". Colipon+(Talk) 23:39, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Then come up with a sensible solution, not some falsehood so that we have to argue that it's okay to tell lies if somewhere in the text we explain that it's a lie. I'm through because this discussion is going around in circles, you haven't presented anything sensible, and you don't appear to understand the basics of article naming conventions. "Taiwanese Minnan" is Taiwanese and Minnan. It is Minnan spoken on Taiwan. That couldn't be simpler. If you want to follow 'common name' conventions, then we need to move this article to "Taiwanese", because that's the only common name it has, or use "Taiwanese" plus some accurate dab tag, which would be fine but hasn't aroused much enthusiasm. kwami (talk) 06:41, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, I would appreciate it if you stopped these personal comments like "you haven't presented anything sensible, and you don't appear to understand the basics of article naming conventions". This is extremely offensive and I would like an apology. I presented four different alternatives (if you read discussion above - Taiwanese (Minnan); Taiwanese (language); Taiwanese language; Taiwanese dialect) but now suddenly you tell me that I haven't ever come up with a "sensible solution". Colipon+(Talk) 17:59, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

You're right, "Taiwanese (Minnan)" is a sensible suggestion, and I do apologize for that. I'm just frustrated that this discussion is going on and on ... and on, without appearing to accomplish anything. I would suggest also "Taiwanese (Hokkien)" as a possibility. kwami (talk) 23:36, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Here's some action from the completely uninvolved: I have changed the redirect Taiwanese language into a disambiguation-page. I don't care what you call the article. The most reasonable thing to present to the uninvolved is said disambiguation-page. So whether this discussion ends in Taiwanese Minnan, Taiwanese(Minnan), Taiwanese(language), or Taiwanese(dialect), please insert the article-title you decided on into that disamb. thank you :) Seb az86556 (talk) 01:35, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

For now I can live with the dab page because this discussion is focussed on bigger fish. If we ever reach a conclusion we should revisit whether "Taiwanese language" should go to a dab page.Readin (talk) 04:18, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Going on the assumption that Kwami is right about Taiwanese being two subdialects of Hokkien, how about an article called "Taiwanese (speech)" that introduces those two subdialects, the differences between them, and how they came to be used in Taiwan? If each of the two sub-dialects are important enough by itself to warrent an article, we can provide a "main-article" link for each one at the beginning of the section that introduces it.

Or we could use name "Taiwanese (language)" because even though Taiwanese is not properly a language, the disabiguating general topic is language. It would be similar to the articles we have on Set (mathematics) and Set (computer science) - A set is neither a mathematics nor is it a computer science, but the topics are distinguished by the general subject matter. Readin (talk) 04:16, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

That ('language' dab) would be analogous to what we currently have with Hakka (language). Once upon a time that would have sparked an edit war, but all seems to be quiet over there.

The prob I have with the (speech) dab is that the topic of 'speech' might more appropriately be used for speeches, such as in oratory: hate speech, etc.

I don't know if Taiwanese is more than one (sub)dialect, I'm just reporting the account in Ethnologue. But I have read that claim elsewhere. And even if it is a single dialect, that dialect is also spoken across the straights in Fujian, so it really isn't (just) Taiwanese. kwami (talk) 05:49, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

yet another edit break, re: Taiwanese language terminology

[undent]I would be more than supportive right now to moving the article to "Taiwanese (language)". Colipon+(Talk) 06:15, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Kwami is understandably becoming exasperated because well-meaning editors are jumping the gun over "Taiwanese language". Before we start talking of Taiwanese language or Taiwanese dialect, we really need to decide how it will be treated. As Kwami is trying to point out, "Taiwanese" is not a 'language' or 'dialect', it's simply a variety of Hokkien spoken in a particular geographical area (also a politically defined area). We have some editors saying that 'Taiwanese' must have its own article because some people customarily refer to 'Taiwanese', and Kwami saying that it is nothing more than a variety or (even worse) a couple of varieties of a dialect that isn't even confined to Taiwan.

It is possibly analagous to "Canadian English", which, if I understand rightly, isn't a 'Canadian dialect' at all; it is a collection of dialects running from east to west across Canada that are are least partly extensions of American dialects up into Canadian territory (correct me if I'm wrong). Incidentally, the article on Canadian English is rather confused and confusing, tending to dwell on minutiae of vocabulary. The section on phonemic features doesn't have a lot to do with phonemes at all.

Bathrobe (talk) 07:03, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I think Canadian English and American English, like Mexican Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, are good analogies. Taiwanese Minnan/Hokkien is equivalent both linguistically and per naming conventions, which is why I still fail to see any problem with it: a name X Y, where X is a demonym and Y is a language or dialect, is the customary English construction for such situations. As long as both X and Y are normal English, it meets the common-name guideline, which says nothing about periphrastic titles needing to be lexicalized units. Further, we don't speak of a North Korean or a South Korean "dialect", and we don't try to force Teochew dialect into one province or another, but accept that dialect boundaries seldom follow political boundaries. When language is named after a political entity, it will differ from the facts on the ground, except in cases where standardization and education impose a uniform variety within those boundaries which stops at the boundaries. kwami (talk) 08:46, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the analogy to Canadian English is quite appropriate. Taiwanese is basically Hokkien with some unique vocabulary and somewhat separate identity. That in itself is enough to warrant a separate article. As for why it should not be "Taiwanese Minnan", I have pointed out this numerous times before. The convention "demonym, language/dialect" is fine if someone used that convention. Here no one uses it. As I pointed out above: "Taiwanese Minnan" is a name not used by anyone - not by scholars, not by common folk, not by media, not by any government, not even by linguistic classifiers. That's what makes the name "Taiwanese Minnan" unacceptable. As it stands the status quo is just not in line with common sense. No one doing research or generally interested in the subject would ever go online to look for a concept called "Taiwanese Minnan". Therefore, "Taiwanese Minnan" seems to me more like a Wikipedia invention to impose pedantic and esoteric linguistic peculiarities rather than something that actually exists as a standalone name. Colipon+(Talk) 15:26, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

That's a minor point, since there's no need for it to be a standalone name. You can point out your opinion as many times as you like, but it's still your opinion. The only standalone name is 'Taiwanese', which would be fine if you can get people to agree to it. kwami (talk) 20:31, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

The fact that it is a minor point is your opinion, actually. I don't understand how "Taiwanese Minnan" is a name not used by anyone - not by scholars, not by common folk, not by media, not by any government, not even by linguistic classifiers." is a personal opinion. The name "Taiwanese Minnan" should at least be in use somewhere - but it is not. This is most certainly not an opinion. I will suggest this again. Taiwanese (language) or Taiwanese (Minnan). If we cannot arrive at a consensus after this I will bring this to WP:3O. Colipon+(Talk) 20:47, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

No need to run to WP:3O here, you can have a third opinion w/o it:

The examples given above about Canadian English or Brazilian Portuguesee might not be quite so convincing. Venturing into something that might be less known one should look at Luxembourgish (article name is Luxembourgish language), the national/local language of Luxembourg. (A disambiguation is not needed since Luxembourgish only refers to the language, the adjective being Luxembourgian.)

Now -- strictly speaking and in a linguistic sense, the article should be called "Luxembourgian Moselle Franconian" as it is a variety of West Central High German whose actual language-area spreads over the border with Germany. Yet, no-one calls it that. In the same way, I find "Taiwanese Minnan" quite an awkward choice. Seb az86556 (talk) 22:11, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Good point. Not even linguists call the language "Taiwanese Minnan", let alone common folk in everyday speech. Colipon+(Talk) 22:27, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Everyone calls it "Taiwanese" and agrees that it's "Minnan". The only real objection is that it's awkward, which I agree with.

Luxembourgish is an official and standardized language, like Croatian and Hindi. Therefore it's an ausbau language. Taiwanese is not. kwami (talk) 00:01, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Is this just a titling conflict?

I haven't read the entirety of this conversation, but it seems to not be a disagreement about fact, but terminology. Which makes sense given the name of the talk page it is occuring on. So then, the answer is: what are the Reliable Sources calling the dialect of Minnan spoken on and around Taiwan, and those places and people influenced by it? Can those involved with an opinion please show some example sources, as would be used to document an article, about the subject? Obviously we can't use Original Research (Wikipedia's definition) to make up a name (there is entirely too much of that in Chinese articles already). SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

Yes, it's just a titling conflict.

Sources call it "Taiwanese". Problem is, that name is used for other things, such as the people of Taiwan. Other names are "Amoy" and "Hokkien", both of which already have articles.

There is nothing wrong with making up a descriptive name. It's done all the time, and specifically allowed by WP naming conventions. kwami (talk) 23:52, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

If even Kwami believes sources call it "Taiwanese", there is sufficient grounds to move the article to Taiwanese (language) or Taiwanese (dialect) or even Taiwanese (Minnan). There is little dispute here that it's called "Taiwanese". The dab is not an issue. It's been discussed above ad nauseum. The point still stands. No RS calls it "Taiwanese Minnan". In fact, no one calls it "Taiwanese Minnan" period. Colipon+(Talk) 00:03, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

It being called "Taiwanese" justifies "Taiwanese Minnan" as much as "Taiwanese (Minnan)". At issue is an opinion that the name is awkward, and apparently a dislike of descriptive names.

Shall we put it to a vote? ("Taiwanese (dialect)" is out, as it is factually wrong.) kwami (talk) 00:09, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Archives

Anyone against archiving contents of the current page and also aggregating all Language-related discussions into its separate page (akin to the discussion on "Monarchical titles"? Colipon+(T) 21:23, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)/languages and dialects for archived discussion on this subject. Colipon+(T) 19:26, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

"de facto" situation of Taiwan?

The current "Polical NPOV" section states that Text should merely state the de facto situation that Taiwan is governed by an independent government/state/regime called the "Republic of China. However, "de facto" always implies "not de jure". In other words, it implies that the ROC illegally governs Taiwan which is a very biased POV. Also when we use "de facto/jure", we should always say according to whom (or to which law) otherwise it's meaningless since what's legal for one state is not for another. I think the most neutral way to deal with that is not to use "de jure" or "de facto" at all but rather to state the facts. eg. we should not write "The ROC de facto governs Taiwan" but "The ROC governs Taiwan and view itself as a sovereign state. The PRC claims Taiwan and does not recognize the ROC". That way, both POV are presented and the reader doesn't have to guess what we mean by "de facto" or if it excludes "de jure" or not (I think it does). So I would suggest to amend the paragraph as follow:

Text should merely state the de facto situation that Taiwan is governed by an independent government/state/regime called the "Republic of China" (however it is not necessary to use the term de facto when doing so as that might imply a POV that the term de jure does not also apply). In policital articles about Taiwan, text should brieftly remind the point of view of the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China. The ROC controls Taiwan and views itself as a sovereign state. The PRC on the other hand does not recognize the ROC and considers its control over Taiwan to be illegitimate. Avoid using the words "de facto" or "de jure" to describe the control of the ROC over Taiwan as they are often meaningless because what is legal for one country is not for another. Additionally, using "de facto" may imply that the ROC illegally controls Taiwan and thus give undue weight to the PRC's POV. It is better to state the facts and let the readers make their own mind. When it is necessary to describe the political status of Taiwan, special note should be made of Taiwan's complex position. The term "Taiwan Province" can be offensive to some people in some contexts and should only be used when attributed to its source or referring specifically to the existing division under the ROC (for example, "James Soong was the only popularly elected governor of Taiwan Province").

Laurent (talk) 20:00, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

The earlier wording had two advantages.

First, it did not require as much. It said that we should state the situation simply without taking sides. It didn't demand that every article on politics should go into the multiple sides of the issue. I think decisions on how much detail to include should be made case by case. Why, for example, should an article about the President of the Republic of China or the Mayor of Taipei need to remind readers about the PRC position? Readin (talk) 23:14, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Second, the earlier text did not presume that there are only two sides that matter. The ROC has a view that Taiwan is part of China. The PRC has a view that Taiwan is part of China. What about the view held by many both inside and outside of Taiwan that Taiwan is not a part of China?

I do agree with the concern about the use of de facto. It doesn't need to be used in articles. In my opinion the reason it was here in the guideline was to preempt complaints from PRC supporters who would say that Taiwan is de jure part of China. The "de facto" in the convention text was to remind them that Wikipedia describe things as they are, not as someone says they should be. Rewording to make this clearer is fine. The statements "Avoid using the words "de facto" or "de jure" to describe the control of the ROC over Taiwan as they are often meaningless because what is legal for one country is not for another" and "Additionally, using "de facto" may imply that the ROC illegally controls Taiwan and thus give undue weight to the PRC's POV" are good. Readin (talk) 23:12, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I guess my concern is that "de facto" is normally used as opposed to "de jure" (otherwise there's no need using the word at all) so we should avoid using it even in the naming convention. Perhaps we could simply use plain English, as in: "Text should merely state the de facto situation fact that Taiwan is governed by an independent government/state/regime called the "Republic of China""

How about it?

I agree that the PRC/ROC's claims don't need to be mentioned in all articles and probably don't need to be detailed here in the naming convention. Laurent (talk) 14:30, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

That change is fine with me. Readin (talk) 13:35, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

That is a good change. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

Proposed edit on section: Republic of China, Taiwan, and variations thereof

Following is the consensus guide on when to use which term in reference to subjects related to the Republic of China (Taiwan). When either Republic of China or Taiwan could be used, either term is acceptable. Mainstream usage of Taiwan often refers to the entire territory of the Republic of China and this usage is acceptable. It is not necessary to also include every other major or minor island held by the Republic of China.

I would like to add the sentences in bold and certainly could use some wording changes.

1. The first sentence, "When either Republic of China or Taiwan could be used, either term is acceptable." is useful because the column in the chart doesn't make it explicit.
2. The second sentence, I think, reflects our current practices and is not in the guideline. I don't propose this to start new terminology wars, just to acknowledge mainstream use, and standard usage already in practice on Wikipedia.
3. The third sentence is a minor point coinciding with the second sentence, but is meant to avoid the unnecessary suffix that occasionally appears after a usage of Taiwan referring to the RoC; eg, "Taiwan, including Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu and some other minor islands".

SchmuckyTheCat (talk) 16:46, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

If we say "When either Republic of China or Taiwan could be used, either term is acceptable", then we are inviting constant edit warring between those who prefer one or the other. There used to be a sort of consensus about when to use each term based on the context and I would like to see that formalized if possible. Basically the idea was to use "Republic of China" when talking about politics and "Taiwan" when talking about matters that are not political. That solves most issues and gives a basis of argument on those topics where it isn't immediately clear. So we talk about the people of "Taiwan", the president of the "Republic of China" and we can argue about Transportation because the planes and trains are state-run but the automobiles are not. Readin (talk) 15:55, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I meant that "either is acceptable" to be like english dialect issues - we don't edit war over style. IOW, the words should disinvite edit warring because there is no preference. The chart below this intro sentence remains intact to differentiate politics vs non-politics, I just wanted to expand the intro to the chart, because there are items in the chart where either term is acceptable. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

I don't see how this is an improvement over anything. We use Taiwan to refer to the territory (Taiwan Area) and Republic of China to refer to political entities. Swapping the two would make both contexts less accurate.--Jiang (talk) 00:52, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Taiwanese naming poll

• "Taiwanese Minnan" (current title)
• "Taiwanese Hokkien"
• "Taiwanese (Minnan)"
• "Taiwanese (Hokkien)"
• "Taiwanese (language)"
• "Taiwanese language"
• "Taiwanese dialect"

I'm not sure how to vote on this poll that Kwami put up, but these are my positions:

Support Taiwanese (language), Taiwanese language, Taiwanese dialect Readin (talk) 00:40, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Will tolerate if necessary Taiwanese Minnan, Taiwanese Hokkien Readin (talk) 00:40, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Please try to support more than just your absolute favorite. If everyone only chooses one we'll never settle on a consensus. Readin (talk) 00:42, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Support any of the above as long as dab-page remains. Regular readers should be able to find this page without expert knowledge. If outcome is Taiwanese language, dab-statement needs to be on top of article. Seb az86556 (talk) 01:35, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think anyone has a problem with the dab page. kwami (talk) 06:11, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Support Taiwanese (language), Taiwanese (Minnan), Taiwanese language. Oppose "Taiwanese Minnan", "Taiwanese Hokkien". Colipon+(Talk) 02:10, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support (1) Taiwanese Hokkien, (2) Taiwanese Minnan as analogous to Taiwanese Mandarin, Canadian English, etc.

Tolerate (3) Taiwanese (Hokkien), (4) Taiwanese (Minnan) as unnecessary but not incorrect tag parallel to "Taiwanese (Mandarin)", "Canadian (English)", etc.

Oppose Taiwanese language, Taiwanese dialect as factually incorrect. kwami (talk) 06:11, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Support (in that order) Taiwanese Hokkien, Taiwanese Minnan, Taiwanese dialect.

Tolerate Taiwanese (Hokkien), Taiwanese (Minnan).

Oppose Taiwanese language. Akerbeltz (talk) 11:28, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Support Taiwanese Hokkien, Taiwanese (Hokkien), Taiwanese (Minnan).

Tolerate Taiwanese Minnan (current title).

Oppose Taiwanese (language), Taiwanese language, Taiwanese dialect.

Bathrobe (talk) 01:26, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Taiwanese Hokkien or Taiwanese Minnan. Keahapana (talk) 23:50, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

It sure looks like Taiwanese Hokkien is winning this. Readin (talk) 23:57, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Gunn (2006), Rendering the Regional: local language in contemporary Chinese media, uses "Taiwanese Southern Min", because he feels using "Taiwanese" alone implies that Taiwanese Hakka, Mandarin, and Austronesian are not Taiwanese. It shows that, in the rare case where dabbing is necessary, such composite names are acceptable. kwami (talk) 07:45, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

It looks like Taiwanese Hokkien has overwhelming support. Would we make this pattern (sub-branch name followed by branch name) the norm, or is Taiwanese a special case? Readin (talk) 15:38, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

That is a norm, along with "X dialect", unless there's an unambiguous common English name to override it. I'll go ahead and make the move. kwami (talk) 20:56, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Please, anything but Hokkien

I didn't see this discussion and vote until now when I saw the page move and traced back. Almost any combination of Taiwanese/Minnan/Southern Min/Holo/Hoklo language/dialect/speech would be far better than Hokkien, the one term that is not used in Taiwan for the language and is both specific to Southeast Asia and prone to confusion with Fujian/Fukien province, besides which northern Fujian speaks not this but other Min dialects. Can we please keep this decision making process open and arrive at some saner conclusion? If we need a yes/no vote now, the first should be "Hokkien" vs. "any of the terms recognized in Taiwan".

To address some of the points discussed earlier, Minnanyu (translation: Southern Min language) is the technical linguistic term in Chinese, Holo/Hoklo and Taiwanese are colloquial terms used in Taiwan, and "yu" is used in Chinese as a suffix for the varieties of Chinese seemingly without the political baggage of "language" vs. "dialect" in English discussions of Chinese language. "Hokkien" is just the Southern Min pronunciation of Fujian, the province whose south coast sent emigrants to both Taiwan and Southeast Asia.

Wikipedia articles for the first-level varieties of Chinese are titled:

• 6 X Chinese: Mandarin Chinese, Wu Chinese, Xiang Chinese, Min Chinese, Jin Chinese, Huizhou Chinese
• 2 X (language): Hakka (language), Gan (language)
• 2 other: Cantonese, Pinghua

The article for the southern Min dialect is titled simply Min Nan. From these we would expect something like Taiwanese Min Nan Chinese for the Taiwan variety. I would personally prefer either Taiwanese Minnan Chinese or Taiwanese Southern Min Chinese slightly over Min Nan, but other than that, a name like that seems like the best and most widely acceptable compromise to me:

• Is a proper hierarchical taxonomic phrase that also includes all terms discussed, except Hoklo/Holo which has low recognition in English and Hokkien which is identified with other places
• Suffixed with Chinese like a majority of the major Chinese dialect articles
• Includes the two most widely used terms in Taiwan for the language, Taiwanese and Minnan
• Including both Taiwanese and Chinese is least likely to offend either Taiwanese or Chinese nationalists
• Avoids the term Hokkien which is identified with other places

--JWB (talk) 03:21, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Welcome to the discussion. It's a pity you didn't turn up earlier. Your comments are saner than some we have seen and deserve consideration.

Bathrobe (talk) 05:08, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Since there hadn't been any objection since the move, I just redirected & reworded about 60 articles when I saw this. I was happy enough with 'Taiwanese Minnan', though 'Taiwanese Hokkien' is more precise, since the general meaning of Fujianese/Fukienese/Hokkien in English is the Amoy etc. dialect of Minnan, not everything spoken in Fujian, or even all of Minnan. Our general convention is Min X for Min languages, and X Chinese for non-Min languages. Hakka and Gan are exceptions because some people objected that 'Hakka Chinese' and 'Gan Chinese' could refer to people. IMO 'Cantonese' should be a redirect page, and in any case Canton dialect should have preference over all of Yue. But that's a discussion going on over at those pages, which you might want to join in on—one point of contention is that since the Canton dialect article has been named Standard Cantonese, it should now be restricted to Standard Cantonese; another is that since Taishanese isn't Cantonese = Canton dialect, it shouldn't be described as such at Cantonese = Yue Chinese (one reason IMO for more precisely named articles). kwami (talk) 07:06, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I've now read all the discussion above as well as looking at Hokkien (which last year was accused of being a recent POV fork of Min Nan) and other articles.

Hokkien and Min are at base both semantically equivalent to Fujian - they all refer to the same province. In Southeast Asia Hokkien connotes the local dialects originating in southern Fujian and/or a standard local form based on those dialects, but this is simply because there was little migration from other parts of Fujian, therefore no non-southern dialects. In linguistics Min connotes the group of dialects historically originating from Fujian, including Teochew and Hainanese.

Using Hokkien or Min(nan) as designations for the Quanzhou-Zhangzhou subgroup of Southern Min are both examples of totum pro parte synecdoche - either Fuzhou and the rest of north and central Fujian, or Teochew and Hainanese, are being omitted for convenience. The word Canton from Guangdong is also an example of totum pro parte. Actually, if you go even farther back, Min is the name of the river meeting the sea at the provincial capital of Fuzhou, so Min meaning Fujian province may be a pars pro toto synecdoche similar to the identification of other Chinese provinces with their principal rivers; then Minnan for Taiwanese would ultimately derive from a sequence of generalization, another generalization, a specialization explicitly indicated by the adjective South and excluding the area of the original river, and then another specialization not explicitly indicated. Standard Cantonese and Standard Mandarin both look to me like phrases which are not heavily used by themselves, but are reasonable disambiguations for Wikipedia titles if there is no short common term making the meaning clear.

Unfortunately there is no unambiguous and common short form of "Quanzhou-Zhangzhou subgroup of Southern Min dialects". But if we have to choose between the two synecdoches of Hokkien and Minnan, for Taiwanese let's use the form used in Taiwan not the form that points away from Taiwan. --JWB (talk) 08:19, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

This difference in search results is kind of spectacular:

• 1 - 10 of about 296,000 for "台灣閩南語"
• 1 - 10 of about 48 for "台灣福建語"

--JWB (talk) 20:22, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Taiwanese Minnan would be acceptable if Minnan itself were classified as undisputably a language. For whatever reason, good or bad, some people still classify Minnan as a dialect group of Chinese. Besides which, the term "Taiwanese Minnan" in English is not in use anywhere. Wikipedia would be the first to properly call the language by that name... Colipon+(Talk) 23:43, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Don't those arguments apply at least as much to "Taiwanese Hokkien"?

The argument that the whole phrase is not in wide use does not hold water. Hardly anyone says "Berkeley, California" all the time; normally you just say "Berkeley". But the article is named Berkeley, California because more taxonomic structure is needed for disambiguation. It is understood (and could also be stated in the article if needed) that more abbreviated forms are normally used when context is sufficient. I believe the Wikipedia naming convention policies say this more or less, but I'm not going to look for citations again tonight.

What amazes me about the above discussion and voting process, is that little of the discussion was about Minnan vs. Hokkien, and few seemed to have a strong opinion on Minnan vs. Hokkien - most seemed to view other issues as more important. Yet when it came to a vote, the only result was to change Minnan to Hokkien, leaving the rest of the name unchanged. --JWB (talk) 06:13, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Hokkien is no better, I agree. But "Berkley, California" is a phrase that is often used in journalism, academia etc. to describe the place, whereas no one has ever described Taiwanese as "Taiwanese Minnan", at least in the English language. There are at least some legible results for "Taiwanese Hokkien". Colipon+(Talk) 08:55, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

In Google Scholar: "Taiwanese Minnan", #3 has "Taiwanese (Minnan)" and #10 "Tenacious Unity in a Contentious Community: Cultural and Religious Dynamics in a …" has Taiwanese (Minnan, or Southern Fujian Dialect)", #12 "Taiwanese Corpus Collection VIA Continuous Speech Recognition Tool" has "Taiwanese (MinNan)", #13 "The Multiple Pronunciations in Taiwanese and the Automatic Transcription of Buddhist …" has "Taiwanese (Minnan)", #14 and #15 both have "Taiwanese Minnan", #16 has "Taiwanese (Minnan-hua)", #17 has "Taiwanese (Minnan)" again. Following pages have more results. Did you miss these or not view them as "legible results" for some reason? The first page with results #1-#10 does mostly have "Taiwanese (Minnan and Hakka)" referring to people rather than "Taiwanese (Minnan)" referring to language, but this just means that those biology papers are more popular than the linguistic papers which appear in later results.

In Google Scholar: "Taiwanese Hokkien", there are actual results for "Taiwanese Hokkien", but also "A comparison of Taiwanese, Taiwan Mandarin, and Peking Mandarin" is #3 but neither the title nor the front page refer to Hokkien - the front page has "Taiwanese (Tw), a variety of Minnan", while #9 "Educational Attainment in Taiwan: Comparisons of Ethnic Groups" identifies "Taiwanese" and "Hokkien" as separate ethnic groups. #42 and #45 actually have "Taiwanese Southern Min" in their titles, while #42 and #44 say "Tai-gi (also called Taiwanese, Hokkien, and Southern Min)" "Southern Min (also known as Taiwanese, Hokkien, or Amoy)" and do not have the phrase "Taiwanese Hokkien".

The Google Scholar results do not show a preponderance of Taiwanese Hokkien over Taiwanese Minnan and/or Taiwanese Min. --JWB (talk) 20:49, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

If it were up to me, I would say neither "Taiwanese Minnan" nor "Taiwanese Hokkien" are good choices. I'd say just move it to "Taiwanese language" or "Taiwanese (Minnan)" or something of that sort. If you search up "Taiwanese language" on Google Scholar, you will know why I take this position. You find 66 results for "Taiwanese Minnan", none in that specific phrase form, you find 101 for "Taiwanese Hokkien", also quite insufficient, but then you find over 400 for "Taiwanese language". Editors here insist that "Taiwanese language" is "inaccurate" because Taiwanese is not, linguistically speaking, a 'language'. Colipon+(Talk) 23:24, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

This is still really bad. What is the best way to get it reverted or renamed to something other than Hokkien? I won't repeat the whole reasoning above, but if there are any specific points obstructing this let's take them up. --JWB (talk) 20:44, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Poll on words Minnan and Hokkien

Please rank these alternatives in decreasing order of preference.

• Article title contains Minnan (or other forms Min Nan, Southern Min, etc.)
• Article title contains Hokkien (or other forms Fukien, Fujian, etc.)
• Article title contains neither

(1) Minnan, (2) neither, (3) Hokkien --JWB (talk) 21:03, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

(1) Hokkien. More precise, more common, don't see a reason to change. (2) Minnan. As for inventing names, the name is "Taiwanese", and it is "Hokkien"; there are lots of composite names on WP, & we use what works. "Language" is no good because, as said before, besides the fact that it's not a language of its own, there are lots of Taiwanese languages. That would be like moving General American to "American language". kwami (talk) 21:12, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Dispute that it is "Hokkien" - Hokkien is a regional English (SE Asia) shorthand referring to a local standard by the name of a larger unit around its place of origin. It is analogous to "Minnan" except that 1) "Hokkien" is used in SEA, "Minnan" is used in Taiwan 2) Hokkien refers to Fujian Province, Minnan refers to southern Fujian Province. --JWB (talk) 21:23, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

The "part for whole", "name of larger unit", etc. arguments don't seem terribly relevant to me. It's interesting how these names came about, but the process by which names come to have narrower or broader meanings than one would expect does not seem a valid argument for excluding certain usages. If you use that kind of argument, "Mandarin" is out completely, since there are no mandarins left to speak it :) Bathrobe (talk) 07:20, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

kwami's argument seemed to be that Hokkien means Southern Min excluding Hainanese and Teochew and is therefore a smaller or lower level taxonomic unit than Southern Min as a whole and therefore a better language name even for Taiwanese. --JWB (talk) 08:27, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I've seen 'Hokkien' around quite a bit. Perhaps it's a bit old fashioned? Lots of sources equate Taiwanese with "Hokkien" or "Hokkian", but not many say exactly what they mean by that. Ethnologue has "Xiamen has subdialects Amoy, Fujian (Fukien, Hokkian, Taiwanese)." Making capitalism in China: the Taiwan connection‎ (1998) has "the Taiwanese managers spoke Hokkian, a Taiwanese dialect (originating from southern Fujian)". The New York Times Almanac 2002 and the The CIA World Factbook (2007) have "Minbei (Fuzhou), Minnan (Hokkien-Taiwanese)". In Singapore English (2007), you have "Hokkien is characterised by many null-subject structures, such as the following from Taiwanese Hokkien"—perhaps this is the regional influence you speak of, though the other citations don't seem to be particularly regional. There's also Introduction to Chinese characters for students of Taiwanese Hokkien (1969), Pronunciation drills for Taiwanese Hokkien (1965), "The third element in the hierarchy I am proposing is seen in Taiwanese Hokkian or Taiwanese." in Linguistic Categories (1983), etc. etc. etc. We can make an argument based on etymology that "Hokkien" means the entirety of Fujian Province, just as one could argue that "Cantonese" is etymologically the entirety of Guangdong Province, but that doesn't seem to be the common usage of the term in English. "Hokkien" is also a more familiar term than "Minnan". kwami (talk) 22:57, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

It's less old-fashioned than "Canton dialect". :) The Ethnologue quote is putting (Fukien, Hokkian, Taiwanese) and possibly Fujian on some kind of par, either as 3-4 separate subdivisions, or more likely 3-4 different regional names, which seems to confirm the necessity for different names in different regions instead of making one name applicable in all regions. The NYT Almanac / CIA Factbook quote also appears to be putting Hokkien and Taiwanese as separate regional names, not applying Hokkien to both SEA and Taiwan. Singapore English uses the Singapore local word as you say. The other quotes do not show obvious signs of SEA influence at least without further investigation. But 10 or so citations does not show relative currency of the term; only comparison does that. It is not immediately clear that Hokkien is "more familiar a term"; for starters, Minnan beats it in Google hits 2.5 million to 400k. --JWB (talk) 23:45, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about the CIA, but Ethnologue just lists alternate names. They aren't necessarily regional or anything else. I assume for the CIA the diff is Taiwan vs. China, not SEA.

Google Books has 250 hits for Minnan or Min Nan, and 402 for Hokkien or Hokkian. Of course, much of the latter is ethnic rather than linguistic. With regular Google, if you omit "similar results" (the default), there are only 650 hits for Minnan or Min Nan vs 773 for Hokkien or Hokkian. (If you click on the last page of the search results, you'll find that many of them never materialize.)

But I don't have a particularly strong preference of Hokkien over Minnan. I only object to "language". kwami (talk) 23:59, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

These are the web searches I was using: Minnan: Web 2.5M hokkien: Web 400K. Not sure how you got yours. For Books, I get different numbers than yours, but Hokkien wins - although if you restrict to recent results, it gets very close. But the question is not which term gets more mentions in total - it's whether Hokkien is appropriate for Taiwanese, and it's much less common in that use, especially in English in Taiwan and Taiwan-oriented sources.. --JWB (talk) 00:14, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, by clicking your links for a Web search, I get Minnan 3,380,000 and Hokkien 4,460,000. Are you sure you haven't set some kind of filter? Bathrobe (talk) 04:37, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Taiwanese (Min Nan) was suggested before, and I still vouch for that over "Taiwanese Hokkien". Min Nan used as a qualifier for other possible varieties of Taiwanese, but also not used with Taiwanese as a single name. But this debate was getting to be about the same length as the "Cantonese" one. Colipon+(Talk) 02:03, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that Google searches aren't arbiters of naming on Wikipedia. They are merely one useful reference point.

(To digress a little, I googled "windscreen" and "windshield" and found that "windshield" is more common and therefore, presumably, "standard". And indeed, the Wikipedia article is at Windshield, with "windscreen" given as an alternative name. But when I googled "carburettor" and "carburetor", surprisingly "carburettor" came out on top. Despite this, the Wikipedia article is at Carburetor. Should the article therefore be moved? Well, if you believe in using Google results as the arbiter, it probably should. But if you use common sense you will realise it's not a major issue. "Carburettor" redirects to "Carburetor", which means anyone can find it, and the article starts by giving both spellings, so no usage is being dismissed as "non-standard". I also did a search on "railroad" and "railway", and found that, lo and behold, "railway" got more results than "railroad". Is the Wikipedia article at "Railway"? No, it's at the much more sensible alternative of Rail transport, which is broader and avoids the kind of silly disputes that are liable to arise over this kind of thing.)

carburetor 859,000; carburettor 174,000. --JWB (talk) 03:19, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

For some reason I got quite different results when I clicked your links: 5,310,000 for "carburettor" and 3,690,000 for "carburetor". Since I wasn't sure about the results I was getting, I deliberately wrote "I googled" instead of "if you google". At any rate, the point is that google searches shouldn't be regarded as the absolute arbiter of usage. If you are proposing to take the worldwide majority of North American speakers as setting a gold standard for Wikipedia, I think we have rather some rather serious issues to discuss. Bathrobe (talk) 03:58, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Nobody has proposed using it as an "absolute arbiter". There is actually a policy guideline, WP:Google test. --JWB (talk) 08:27, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

For the title of the article on Hokkien or Minnan as spoken in Taiwan, I'm don't mind either "Taiwanese Minnan" or "Taiwanese Hokkien". But if Taiwanese Hokkien is not the usual name for Minnan or Hokkien as spoken in Taiwan, then we should probably not use it. I personally have a soft spot for "Hokkien" as it is a widespread traditional name for the Minnan language. (There appears to be a subtle chauvinism in matters Chinese that marginalises the south, overseas Chinese, and Southeast Asia in particular as being somehow "irrelevant", "non-mainstream", or "divergent" and therefore casually sloughable.) But in this case, if "Minnan" is more appropriate for the Taiwanese situation than "Hokkien", I would certainly not insist on "Hokkien".

My comments in earlier threads relate to the naming of the main standard dialect as a whole, spoken around Xiamen/Quanzhou, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. This is normally called Minnan or Hokkien. I don't mind either name as the title of the article, as long as alternative names are prominently used where appropriate, and not just referred to briefly in the introduction. What I mean by this is that the article should not say "Minnan is widely spoken in Southeast Asia..... Minnan usage is especially strong in ...", it should point out that "Minnan is widely spoken in Southeast Asia, where it is known as Hokkien. ... Hokkien usage is especially strong in...". In referring to Minnan or Hokkien as used in Taiwan, the article should refer to "Taiwanese" as a name. Whether it should then continue to use "Taiwanese", or use "Hoklo" or some other name is another question.

I also believe that there is no need for mindless conformity in naming, nor is it our place to aggressively assert new standards over existing usages, especially where the new standards have not yet, in fact, displaced existing usages.

Agree with these paragraphs. Insisting on "Minnan" in an article on Singapore or Malaysia would be equally out of place. --JWB (talk) 03:19, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

To repeat, I think we should probably use Taiwanese Minnan as the name of the article if Taiwanese Minnan is the more common term. I'm less happy with "Taiwanese language", even if it is commonly called that, because it is inaccurate -- "Taiwanese" is not a language, or even a dialect, but merely a major variant of a dialect, and not even its speakers would maintain that it is a distinct "language". Bathrobe (talk) 02:46, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

The only reservation I held about "Taiwanese Minnan" is that it is not at all in common usage as a string. The argument against having it simply named 'Taiwanese' was because there are other things that can be called "Taiwanese" such as indigenous languages. Therefore, "Taiwanese (Minnan)" or "Taiwanese (Min Nan)" does the job of using "Min Nan" as a disambiguating factor, but retaining the commonly used term "Taiwanese" as the subject of the article. Colipon+(Talk) 02:55, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I see Taiwanese Minnan, Taiwanese (Minnan), Taiwanese/Minnan, Taiwanese or Minnan, or any similar combination as being basically the same. As I pointed out, in order to avoid ambiguity Wikipedia titles are often much more qualified or specific phrases than are usually used in actual speech, but this is not a big issue in my view. --JWB (talk) 03:19, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth (and I'm not saying it's worth that much), a Google search of hokkien taiwan got me 501,000 results, minnan taiwan got me 68,400 results, hoklo taiwan got me 50,400 results, and "min nan" taiwan got me 28,800 results. It sounds to me like Hokkien and Taiwan are not so mutually exclusive, after all. (On the other hand, it could just be a lot of southeast Asians posting to BSBs and blogs about the Hokkien spoken in Taiwan.) Bathrobe (talk) 06:44, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Again, I get different numbers; also, when I reverse the order with "taiwan" first in the phrase, "taiwan minnan" gets more hits than "taiwan hokkien", which is opposite to the results for the opposite word order.

As I said before, the main argument is that the terms Minnan and Hokkien are common usage in Taiwan and SEA respectively. kwami also made a claim that Hokkien is a significantly more familiar word in general, which I don't view as overriding the first argument, but he might. The variety of search results so far do not seem to support that claim. --JWB (talk) 08:27, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

At the moment there are two articles on the same topic, Min Nan and Hokkien. Shouldn't we consider merging them? Bathrobe (talk) 05:21, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

A lot of the content of those articles was copied from one to the other with minor changes, leading to understandable charges of WP:POV fork. Since the terms do not have identical connotations, I am not against separate articles if there is enough separate material, but that may currently not be the case. --JWB (talk) 08:27, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

See, "Hokkien" simply means "Fujian" in Minnan. I don't know who it was that defined "Hokkien" as the Quanzhou-Zhangzhou branch specifically, and would like to see the sources for that bold blaim. Colipon+(Talk) 10:54, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Jerry Norman (Chinese, Cambridge Linguistic Surveys, Cambridge UP, 1988:

“ In Southeast Asia, dialects of the Xiàmén type (so-called "Hokkien dialects") predominate, except in Thailand, where Cháozhōu-speakers form the majority. Smaller communities of Fúzhōu, Pútián and Hǎinán dialect speakers are also to be found, especially in Malaysia. ”

This pretty much indicates that "Hokkien" refers to Amoy-type dialects. Bathrobe (talk) 11:25, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and this is referring to a single point (Xiamen) rather than to an extended area. Also, this one, non-primary reference is in a paragraph on SEA; the previous paragraph is on Taiwan and does not mention "Hokkien". The chapter on Min goes on for 11 pages and abundantly uses terms like "Southern Min" and "Xiamen", but only gives "Hokkien" once as a gloss for the SEA regional terms, deprecating it with "so-called". The whole book makes no other mention of "Hokkien" except the bibliography which lists a course "Spoken Amoy Hokkien". Ramsey's "The Languages of China" does not mention "Hokkien" even once. --JWB (talk) 16:06, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

It is not necessarily referring to a single point. It is referring to dialects of the Xiàmén type, which renders it somewhat less precise than what you are implying. In fact, "Xiàmén" is Norman's usual characterisation the dialect we are describing. With regard to Taiwan, Norman says: "The majority of the inhabitants of Táiwān speak Mǐn dialects closely related to that of Xiàmén in southern Fújiàn". If we were to follow Norman, the title of the article would be "Xiamen-type Min dialects".

In fact, in its section on dialects, Norman's book deals almost exclusively with abstand languages rather than ausbau languages. In discussing the Min dialects, he concentrates almost completely on linguistic aspects like the distribution of dialects, isoglosses, etc. If he is niggardly in his use of "Hokkien", deigning to use it once, prefixed with a "so-called" and firmly ensconced in quotation marks, this is generous compared to the treatment that the term "Minnan" gets. Norman does not use the name "Minnan" at all. What he does mention is "Southern Min" in the context of the traditional linguistic division between Northern and Southern Min dialects, and then proposes that it should be superseded by an East/West division, which he thenceforth uses almost exclusively. If anything, Ramsey is even worse, virtually apologising for mentioning Southern Min at all: "Somewhat arbitrarily, let us look more closely at the Southern Min dialect of Amoy, which is essentially the same dialect as Taiwanese" (my emphasis).

At any rate, that is not the point. I was merely answering Colipon's call for a source for the bold claim that "Hokkien" can be restricted to a narrow meaning, and Norman does that. You will notice that Norman is pretty much a stickler for using putonghua terminology (he is the one who preferred Yuè over Cantonese in the broad sense, and also uses Kèjiā in preference to Hakka), and it would appear to be a major concession that he even mentions the term "Hokkien".

As for whether "Hokkien" is widespread terminology in the academic literature, that is another question. Norman and Ramsey, as academics dealing with Chinese languages within a Chinese framework, seem extremely reluctant to use non-standard, non-Mandarin terminology, even more so if it is terminology used outside China. Notice that Ramsey uses the word "Hoklo" only once, and not in the Min section, but in the context of "The Classification of the Minorities":

"Who, for example, are the mysterious "boat people"-- the Hoklo, the Tanka, the Xumin, and perhaps others -- that one catches mention of from time to time? Presumably they still ply the waters in and around the South China coast, but little concrete is known about them."

Needless to say, academic usage would definitely be a factor in deciding what to name the article, but the failure of Ramsey and Norman to use "Hokkien" certainly doesn't tilt the argument in favour of "Minnan". Bathrobe (talk) 22:53, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I wrote "I don't know who it was that defined "Hokkien" as the Quanzhou-Zhangzhou branch specifically, and would like to see the sources for that bold blaim." I did not ask for anyone to demonstrate that "Hokkien" is limited to a "narrow meaning". You may have misunderstood. I am asking someone to demonstrate that "Hokkien" is the same as the "Quanzhou-Zhangzhou" linguistic classification, as the article currently claims without citation. The reason "Hokkien" is in wide usage is clearly not at the behest of linguists trying to classify dialects by drawing taxonomic trees on a desk. The reason "Hokkien" is a common term is because Chinese descendants in Malaysia and Indonesia refer to their home language as "Hokkien". Drawing on this demographic profile Hokkien would seem like a segment of the Min Nan group of languages. Xiamen dialect is generally known as "Amoy" in and that is where the article is currently located. Whether this is a problem, I don't know.

For dialects of Min, it is difficult to say whether or not an Ausbau variety still exists, period. Fuzhou dialect served as the basis for a "standardized Min" language although I doubt this had much reach outside of a 100-km radius. Min languages are extremely diverse - with five or six mutually unintelligible forms.

The reason I advocate for "Min Nan" over "Hokkien" is only from personal experience. Of all the Taiwanese friends I have that actually speak Taiwanese, they refer to their language as Tai-yu or Minnan-hua. The name "Taiwanese (Min Nan)" reflects this usage. No one refers to it as "Hokkien" or any variant thereof. The Taiwanese government calls it "Hoklo" or "Minnan", variably, but never calls it "Hokkien". Colipon+(Talk) 23:56, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Colipon, my Norman quotation obviously didn't quite hit the mark, so we still need a proper source. As for the rest, I was merely pointing out that neither Norman nor Ramsey provides justification for using Minnan over Hokkien. This is not the same as pushing for Hokkien. Bathrobe (talk) 00:49, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

JWB said, "These are the web searches I was using: Minnan: Web 2.5M hokkien: Web 400K." Well, I clicked on your links, and Minnan has 653 hits, while Hokkien gets 758. Google claims they are actually 2.6 and 0.4M, but then clarifies, "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 758 already displayed." These are mirrors, archives, and the like. kwami (talk) 08:49, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I find it very strange that we are getting such different results. What exactly is going on? Could location have anything to do with it? Bathrobe (talk) 09:24, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

It could be region as well as settings and personalization based on past search history.

I clicked through to the "very similar" hits and got stuff like zh-min-nan Wikipedia articles, and blogs. Did not see mirrors or archives, but Google will not return results beyond 1000 for any query. 653 or 758 seem like very low numbers for those words. --JWB (talk) 09:35, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

JWB, the vast differences we are getting are very worrying. Perhaps you should check your Google settings. My only setting is to choose English-language pages. I'm not sure how much control you can get over personalisation, but in any case, it appears that your numbers are far more restricted (i.e., smaller in an absolute sense) than mine are. The extreme differences in numbers make Google searches virtually useless. Bathrobe (talk) 23:00, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Are there any real objections to moving it to "Taiwanese (Minnan)" or "Taiwanese (Min Nan)"? Calling it "Taiwanese Hokkien" is very awkward for a native Taiwanese speaker, who has generally always considered their language "Minnanhua" (at least the ones I've spoken to; most of them have never heard the term "Hokkien" to describe the language). Could also get some participation from WikiProject Taiwan... Colipon+(Talk) 10:54, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I think Taiwanese Minnan, Taiwanese (Minnan), Taiwanese Hokkien, and Taiwanese (Hokkien) would all be acceptable. IMO there isn't a whole lot to differentiate them from an English-speaker's POV. kwami (talk) 19:33, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Better example?

The NC-CHN currently gives "When there is a more popularly used form in English (such as Taoism)" as an exception to the Hanyu Pinyin convention. Since WP editors have continuously disagreed over the Daoism–Taoism romanization issue, could we find an uncontroversial example? Maybe Peking duck or Yangtze River? Keahapana (talk) 20:50, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'll change it to "Yangtze River". Keahapana (talk) 02:06, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

X Lake

X Lake - more harmonious appearance

See also List of lakes in China

In Category:Lakes of China, there are some "X Lake" and some "Lake X". I suggest to change them to one unified format "X Lake". So Hongze Lake instead of Lake Hongze; Google lets you find sources that use Hongzhe Lake. I do not say one format is for its own is better than the other. But the overall appearance of the articles related to Chinese geography may be more harmonious. Other geography articles named like X Classname:

Class (E)	Class (C)	Class (P)	Example (Pinyin)	Example (English)
District		Qū	Bīnchéng Qū	Bincheng District
Autonomous Region				Tibet Autonomous Region
County		Xiàn	Nántóu Xiàn	Nantou County
City		Shì	Nántóu Shì	Nantou City
Province		Shěng	Táiwān Shěng	Taiwan Province
Mountains			Āiláoshān	Ailao Mountains
Mountain		Shān	Tiānmù Shān	Tianmu Mountain (also has Mount X)
Glacier			..	Mingyong Glacier
Peak		Feng
Hill			..	see List of hills in Hangzhou
Island		Dǎo	Liúgōng Dǎo	Liugong Island
Plateau		Cǎoyuán	Bàshàng Cǎoyuán	Bashang Plateau
Peninsula			..	Shandong Peninsula
Spring		Quán	Bǎi Mài Quán	Baimai Spring
Waterfall		Pù Bù	Hǔ Kǒu Pù Bù	Hukou Waterfall
River		Hé	Huái Hé	Huai River
River		Jiang	Chang Jiang	Chang River
Valley			..	Insukati Valley
Pass		Guān	Kūnlúnguān	Kunlun Pass
Beach
Basin		Péndì	Tǎlǐmù Péndì	Tarim Basin
Sea, X Gulf		Hăi	Bó Hăi	Bohai Sea
Desert		Shāmò	Tǎkèlāmǎgān Shāmò	Taklamakan Desert
Gorge		Xiá	Wū Xiá	Wu Gorge
Bay		Wān	Bóhǎi Wān	Bohai Bay
Strait			..	Taiwan Strait
Cave		Dòng	Xiānrén Dòng	Xianren Cave
Plain		Píngyuán	Chéngdū Píngyuán	Chengdu Plain
Reservoir				Zhelin Reservoir

Lakes have X Lake and Lake X. I suggest for lakes like for the other landforms to use consistently: "X Lake" / Hóngzé Hú / Hongze Lake What do you think, would it improve the appearance of articles related to Chinese geography? TrueColour (talk) 00:51, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

X Lake - Other reasons

better sorting in tables

• List of lakes in China

Usage - "Aibi Lake" and "Lake Aibi"

• Used by Ministry of Water Respources http://www.mwr.gov.cn/english1/20040802/38171.asp
• Aibi Lake: @ sina.com http://english.sina.com/china/2008/1202/202055.html
• Aibi Lake: @ china.org.cn http://www.china.org.cn/english/environment/233972.htm
• .cn
  • http://www.google.com/search?q=%22aibi+lake%22+site:cn 804
  • http://www.google.com/search?q=%22lake+aibi%22+site:cn 34

.cn

• http://www.google.com/search?q=%22lake+dongting%22+site:cn 1700
• http://www.google.com/search?q=%22dongting+lake%22+site:cn 17000

X Lake - Discussion

"Lake X" is normal English. "X Lake" is a kind of Chinglish innovation. Why try to force Wikipedia to embrace the inferior term for the sake of "uniformity"? This is not going to "improve the appearance of articles", it is simply going to enforce uniform ugliness. Is it something about Wikipedia that "setting forth the sum of human knowledge" gets to be interpreted as "creating an even better Wikipedia version of human knowledge"? Bathrobe (talk) 14:34, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

My first check on your Chinglish statement was to look at Category:Lakes of Arizona. Please use harmonious language. I am trying to increase beauty. Both ways "X Lake" and "Lake X" are acceptable. Lake X may be more archaic and X Lake more modern. TrueColour (talk) 15:40, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I think a quick scan of what's more common in China related literature might help. I agree that Lake X is more common in English as a pattern but the moment I read it, I had to think of West Lake which I've never seen any other way in Englisn publications. Akerbeltz (talk) 16:44, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

West Lake is an exception becasue West is a literal translation, and the word "West" has its real meaning and should be placed before "Lake". But usually China's lakes' English names are just pinyin. --Pengyanan (talk) 17:49, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

@"I agree that Lake X is more common in English as a pattern" - So the Chinglish took over in Arizona Category:Lakes of Arizona? TrueColour (talk) 18:22, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

X Lake and Lake X are both valid English. X Lake is the native Germanic pattern, Lake X is a loan from French. The Noun-Adjective pattern has prestigious connotations to some and continues to be imported to English, for example "Team X" which has only gained ground in the last couple of decades. While I understand the impulse to avoid making English conform to Chinese, all too often it winds up championing some other unstated preconception of what English ought to conform to.

Lakes of England has 19 X Lake(s) and 0 Lake X. Lakes of the United States has 696 lines containing Lake, of which 205 start with Lake. Lakes of Canada has 402 lines with Lake, 52 beginning with Lake, almost all of which are lakes originally explored and named by the French. Lakes of Australia goes against the pattern with 62 and 37, so perhaps User:Bathrobe whose page says he is Australian can be forgiven for the assumption. --JWB (talk) 19:13, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Also note that for some of the most famous lakes in China, there is an existing English language tradition of using the "X Lake" format. For example, googling "Tungting Lake", 13,900; "Lake Tungting", 1,990. --JWB (talk) 19:25, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks JWB, especially for the numbers for names in English native countries. TrueColour (talk) 19:35, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I strongly suggest that the names of articles, whether "X Lake" or "X Mountain" not be changed until consensus is reached. Many Chinese mountain article names have now been changed, Mount Wuzhi being one example.--Anna Frodesiak (talk) 21:37, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I am pleased to see someone bring this issue to discussion. I personally do not have any preference on which one should be the naming convention. I am simply a rule follower and will be pleased to follow, if applicable, the new rules. BTW, I recently just moved XX Lake back to Lake XX, and XX Mountain back to Mount XX. It is someone else that unilaterally changed the lakes' and mountains' names against the current rules. And I moved Mount Wuzhi from Wuzhi Shan, not from Wuzhi Mountain. No mater which one, XX Mountain or Mount XX, should be adopted as the naming convention, XX Shan is apprently not the correct title for English Wikipedia. Thanks, Anna Frodesiak.--Pengyanan (talk) 22:31, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Tian Shan for example has been established usage in Western languages for over a century. --JWB (talk) 01:46, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Exceptions always exist. And exceptions cannot replace the principle. And I have not ever moved Tian Shan. --Pengyanan (talk) 02:11, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Mount Everest and Tian Shan are the first exceptions that came to my mind. JWB, thank you for " The Noun-Adjective pattern has prestigious connotations to some " - it is a feeling I had, but I had no good words for. Noun-Ajective is a little bit like when addressing a person, Mr. X, Mount X, Lake X - for me. And X Lake, X Mountain sounds more relaxed, better flowing in the language. Having heard Mount Everest for so long, it is strange to hear Everest Mountain, but I would even like this better. Nonetheless I think this is no topic for discussion, most people will prefer Mount Everest. TrueColour (talk) 02:21, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Mr. X is of Romance origin, as is the convention of placing personal name before family name. Latin/Romance conventions are both default-prestigious or default-dignified and default-foreign for many English speakers. Another good example is English speakers giving strong penultimate stress, as if they were Italian or Spanish, to Japanese words that are actually stressed on other syllables or not at all. --JWB (talk) 02:58, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you Pengyanan for being so relaxed about the whole thing. I'm sure we can all work this out if we are friendly.

My position, just to be clear, is that there are plenty of X Lake and plenty of Lake X names across the globe. Both must exist. A rule or convention won't serve in this case. A guideline is the best way to go. Something like: Try to name the thing xxxxxxx unless it really must be the other way. Same for mountains and rivers and whatever. Wikipedia is here to represent the truth, not create it. Cheers and good will to you both. --Anna Frodesiak (talk) 22:56, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

This is not about lakes around the globe, but about lakes in China. Sometimes several things are true. Some people say X Shan, some X Mountain, some Mount X. Please, what are the reasons for "Lake X"? I see none. Only that Australians seem to like that more. TrueColour (talk) 00:08, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

FYI, it seems that Encyclopædia Britannica does not adopt a universal naming convention for lakes in China. For example, it uses Lake XX for Lake Poyang and XX Lake for Lake Dongting. But it seems that it adopts Mount XX, not XX Mountain, as the naming convention, e.g., Mount Tai, Mount Wutai, Mount Huang, and Mount Wuzhi. --Pengyanan (talk) 00:38, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

• X Lake I think it would best to follow established English usage where one is shown to exist, and "Lake" after name in the general case. --JWB (talk) 03:19, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I stand corrected. Lake X and X Lake are both found. If you look at a list of lakes in Canada, both are found. If you look at a list of lakes in the U.S., both are found. If you look at a list of lakes in Australia and New Zealand, both are found, although Lake X is overwhelming. If you look at a list of loughs in Ireland or lochs in Scotland, the overwhelming usage is Lake/Lough/Loch X. It appears that in England the normal usage is X Lake.

There is a good reason why Lough/Loch X is in that order in Ireland and Scotland - Gaelic is a language with noun-adjective order. If we were to follow that example, we would list Chinese lakes as X Hu, after which you would complain again we were trying to foist Chinese conventions on English text which ought to be strictly English. --JWB (talk) 12:48, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

This is a ridiculous argument. It's irrelevant whether the order came from French or from Gaelic. A number of English-speaking countries follow that usage. You appear to hold the view that the only valid usage in English is that of England. Are you English? Your argument appears to be that, according to my own logic, we should follow Chinese order, and that then I "would complain that we were trying to foist Chinese conventions on English text". Sorry, that's not my logic, it's yours, and I would appreciate it if you wouldn't tell me what I think. Bathrobe (talk) 14:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I will admit to being from one of the English-speaking countries where "X Lake" is in the majority, which have a dozen times as much population as the total for the English-speaking countries where "Lake/Loch/Lough X" is in the majority. Thank you for clarifying that you are not complaining about apparent usage of Chinese styles in English, as you have done on occasion in the past. --JWB (talk) 16:19, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

It's also interesting that 25% greater is "overwhelming" while a 7:1 ratio in a much larger sample is merely "both are found". --JWB (talk) 13:04, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I was speaking impressionistically and it's nice see that you are so spending so much time counting these lake names and calculating the percentages to prove that my impression was overhasty. However, nothing you've said proves which usage is correct. Is this really a POV that is so dear to your heart that you are willing to spend hours of your time ensuring that "X Lake" prevails? Or are you simply feeling annoyed that I loftily claimed that "X Lake" is Chinglish. I admit that I was wrong, but my being wrong doesn't seem like a good reason to waste any more time on this. Bathrobe (talk) 14:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

If neither usage is "correct" (to the exclusion of the other) and there is not a clear established usage for a particular Chinese lake, that means we are free to consider the choice on other merits, rather than dismiss one alternative out of hand as "inferior" and "ugliness".--JWB (talk) 16:19, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I have already admitted that my original statement was incorrect. If that all you have to say, you've made your point. Can you now proceed to proving why (1) We need to decide on one usage and (2) Why the "X Lake" convention should be the default setting for China? Or does your argument boil down to the fact that you come from an English-speaking country which "has a dozen times as much population as the total for (other) English-speaking countries"?Bathrobe (talk) 17:03, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

The arguments were already presented and your response was the inflammatory comments starting this subdiscussion. Briefly, they are that consistency (of several kinds: between same-language articles, between languages, and between various classes of Chinese geographical features) may be desirable, all other things being equal, and that Wikipedia has decided on conventions in some cases, which is exactly what this page WP:Naming conventions (Chinese) is about. --JWB (talk) 17:17, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

The statistics and a look at Category:Lakes of Arizona are bringing light into the discussion and will shift away the clouds brought by the saying: ""Lake X" is normal English. "X Lake" is a kind of Chinglish innovation. Why try to force Wikipedia to embrace the inferior term for the sake of "uniformity"?" . TrueColour (talk) 16:36, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

There is no evidence that X Lake is "general usage" in the English-speaking world, and thus no reason to favour one over the other. This proposal is only being made because a Portuguese Wikipedian (this is only relevant in the light of said Wikipedian's comment that "Only that Australians seem to like that more") has decided that he personally prefers X Lake, and wishes to impose this on all China articles. You will notice that TrueColour only came to this naming conventions discussion page after his efforts to change names at China-related articles were blocked by reference to naming conventions. This is a mischievous proposal and is a guaranteed waste of time. Bathrobe (talk) 10:51, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Of course, nobody has actually claimed X Lake is "general usage" in the English-speaking world. For one thing, it is just a vague phrase rather than actual reference statistics. As for the suggestion of Portuguese bias, Portuguese has the opposite order, Lagoa de X. --JWB (talk) 13:17, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Portuguese order is irrelevant. The point is that TrueColour is a non-native English speaker who is coming to articles on Chinese topics and trying to set naming rules according to his own preferences. He has himself declared that "And X Lake, X Mountain sounds more relaxed, better flowing in the language. Having heard Mount Everest for so long, it is strange to hear Everest Mountain, but I would even like this better." The only thing that seems to be stopping him is that "most people will prefer Mount Everest".

If you check this user's past edits, you will find that he was consistently changing the names of Portuguese towns to "X Municipality" until he was stopped. He also seemed to want Mongolian aimags to be called provinces on the grounds of uniformity. He seems very big on this sort of thing. Bathrobe (talk) 14:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Non-native TrueColour seems to know more about X Lake usage in the United States than you. The Mongolian aimags are called provinces, only the overview article Aimags of Mongolia that was moved by some user should be moved back to Provinces of Mongolia. WP:UE. Light may come into your body by visiting Aveiro_District#Municipalities, where it is shown that municpalities and towns are different entities, e.g. Santa_Maria_da_Feira_Municipality#Cities_and_towns Santa Maria da Feira Municipality has 3 cities and 13 towns. It is dark speech to say " he was consistently changing the names of Portuguese towns to "X Municipality" until he was stopped.". Only blind people may think they find that, as they see nothing. People looking for harmony and light will find other things. You could be more friendly to other people. If you want to rename "Mount Everest" to Everest Mountain I think you will not succeed for long. TrueColour (talk) 16:54, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Hint: 'follow established English usage where one is shown to exist, and "Lake" after name in the general case' is referring to two cases, not one, and the second case is the one in which there is not an established English name for that particular Chinese lake. It is not something like 'follow established English usage, one has been shown to exist, which is "Lake" after name in general usage' as you seem to have misread. --JWB (talk) 13:26, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it would best to follow established English usage where one is shown to exist, and "Lake" after name in the general case. No, I understood it correctly. "Follow English usage wherever one exists, otherwise follow X Lake". In other words, unless there is an established usage, the default usage is "X Lake". Please let me know if I have misunderstood.

I can see interminable problems caused by this issue, not least that raised by TrueColour: "What would be exact requirements to say that 'X Lake (used by Chinese government and Chinese media) can be overwritten by media published in the British Isles or elsewhere?" For a start I can right now produce an example of "Lake Tung-t'ing", in a translation of a Chinese poem by A. C. Graham (who, for the record, was not Australian). Will this entitle me to change "Dongting Lake" to "Lake Dongting", or to veto attempts to enforce "Dongting Lake"? Are we going to be swamped with editors citing Chinese-based web sites proving that "Dongting Lake" is correct? Do we really need this much trouble because someone likes "harmony"?

I already produced 1,990 examples of "Lake Tungting", and the number is probably greater if you separate the syllables. The point is that there are many times as many for "Tungting Lake" making this case fairly clear and not challengeable by a single example.

The status quo on the issue is that there is no standard at all, and editors are free to contest each name individually. By definition this is more conflict and chaos than if there is some standard, even if there are some borderline cases where the standard is difficult to apply, as is the case with most standards. --JWB (talk) 17:06, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Taking search hit counts as naming justification lets the naming being influenced by producing search hits. One poem "Dongting Lake" published on two thousand pages quickly leads to new count results. here are 17000 for Dongting Lake within .cn. TrueColour (talk) 18:39, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

That is a risk, although the biggest effect is usually from mirrors of Wikipedia which often bias results towards the Wikipedia status quo. See WP:Google test for policy on using and interpreting search results. --JWB (talk) 19:10, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Book titles - mirrored by book stores. TrueColour (talk) 20:06, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I still feel that this is a waste of time being caused by one single editor who is trying to force uniformity where no uniformity should be enforced. I am disappointed in JWB's taking up the cudgel on behalf of this person and can only hope that it is because I have somehow rubbed him up the wrong way and caused him to come out fighting, rather than an actual commitment to this Wiki-storm in a teacup. Bathrobe (talk) 14:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

We've participated in previous discussions (e.g. Yangtze andChang Jiang four years ago) where you strongly opposed what you perceived as importing Chinese terminology, and I was more tolerant of it and took a moderate position in cases where English usage is not established or is in the process of changing. My views on the subject were formed before any contact with you, although discussion has made me articulate them more clearly.--JWB (talk) 16:19, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

User JWB, you have been waiting for a long time -- four years? Since I started out by making a wrong call on this one, I withdraw my comment and withdraw from this debate. You are free to join forces with user TrueColour to argue for this new convention. I will not oppose you, nor will I make further comments. Bathrobe (talk) 22:24, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry you feel cudgeled. My point was not that this is some kind of personal grudge match, but rather that my position and yours are longstanding views, not cooked up recently. I think the debate was productive and stimulating in spite of the tone that started this exchange. I have not been waiting but have simply explicated my views when discussions have come up during the periods when I have been following Wikipedia. I hope future interactions will be more cuddly then cudgely. --JWB (talk) 02:26, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

How editors come to the discussion here or where they live or what religion, if any, they adhere too, is private affairs. The claim was made that X Lake is Chinglish, as reply a pointer was made to Category:Lakes of Arizona to show that this is probably not true. Links were given to show that X Lake is used by English language media in China including government publications. English language sources may apply different naming patterns for same lakes. So, likely both ways are acceptable. To make lives of readers (easier recognition, i.e. easier parsing by human brain) and editors (linking, sortable tables) more beauty, the proposal is to use X Lake for all lakes. One could revise this convention if it is found that "Lake X" is established for a specific lake in literature and that use of "X Lake" in that case is very misleading. What would be exact requirements to say that "X Lake" (used by Chinese government and Chinese media) can be overwritten by media published in the British Isles or elsewhere? TrueColour (talk) 14:31, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry to have opened this can of worms again. Black Lake should be not be renamed Lake Black, whether in Portugal, China or Canada. The name of the article should represent the name of the place or thing. That should supersede a desire for harmonious appearance, ease of sorting, consistency, etc.

Wuzhi Mountain has been renamed Mount Wuzhi, which translates to Mount Five Finger. This sounds pretty darn dumb to the people of Hainan. 8 million of us here know it as Wuzhi Mountain. Wikipedia is now teaching the world something that is not true. I would be mighty grateful if somebody would change it back to what it is called. Now I have to go. Mount Brokeback is coming on in 5 minutes. --Anna Frodesiak (talk) 21:48, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Anna, let me clarify two things. 1. Wuzhi Mountain has NOT been renamed Mount Wuzhi. I have pointed out this for more than once. I moved Mount Wuzhi from Wuzhi Shan, not from Wuzhi Mountain. More clearly, it is Wuzhi Shan, not Wuzhi Mountain, that has been renamed Mount Wuzhi. Wuzhi Shan is not the correct title, no matter how much you like the name Wuzhi Mountain (please notice the difference between Mountain and Shan). 2. Most of the 8 million people in Hainan are Chinese people. They do not speak English and cannot know this mountain as Wuzhi Mountain. I believe that what you refer to are at most thousands of English speaking people who resident in Hainan. Please don't exaggerate. -- Pengyanan (talk) 22:13, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi Pengyanan, Okay, perhaps not all 8 million. Definitely thousands of Chinese people (students, people in the tourist industry and others) and thousands of foreigners. Regardless of what it was called, it is now called Mount Wuzhi. Either Wuzhi Shan or Wuzhi Mountain would be fine by me. Cheers.--Anna Frodesiak (talk) 22:26, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

some numbers

• http://www.google.com/search?q=%22wuzhi+mountain%22 12400
• http://www.google.com/search?q=%22wuzhi+shan%22 10000
• http://www.google.com/search?q=%22mount+wuzhi%22 778

TrueColour (talk) 23:28, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

What's your argument? If you want to move Mount Wuzhi back to Wuzhi Shan, then the number of Wuzhi Shan in your Google search is not valid because many, if not most, of the pages just provide the pinyin of this mountain. If you want to move Mount Wuzhi to Wuzhi Mountain, as I already said, I have no position on this debate. Please try to reach consensus by yourself. --Pengyanan (talk) 23:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Someone said "Wuzhi Shan is not the correct title, no matter how much you like the name" - that's a point of view that the numbers may change. TrueColour (talk) 00:15, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

As someone said, the number of Wuzhi Shan in your Google search is not valid because many, if not most, of the pages just provide the pinyin of this mountain. "Wuzhi Shan" is still apparently not the correct title in English Wikipedia. --Pengyanan (talk) 00:35, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Did anyone say that Wuzhi Shan is the correct title? But there was someone who moved from Wuzhi Shan to Mount Wuzhi and whilst seeing this numbers he takes no action to fix the former move. TrueColour (talk) 00:53, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

If no one says Wuzhi Shan is the correct title, then no one should move Mount Wuzhi back to Wuzhi Shan. I have to ask you again: what's your argument? Do you want to move Mount Wuzhi back to Wuzhi Shan to fix the former move? --Pengyanan (talk) 00:56, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The light may come: Wuzhi Mountain! TrueColour (talk) 01:01, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I have NEVER EVER moved Wuzhi Mountain! What I moved is Wuzhi Shan! How many times do I need to repeat myself to you! My move is correct if you also agree that Wuzhi Shan is not correct! --Pengyanan (talk) 01:11, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I know. I never said the article was moved from Wuzhi Mountain. The move at least made it more English. The horizon shows that the best of the three versions will be there. TrueColour (talk) 02:04, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

X Lake - Changing the NC

I changed the NC per discussion. I was directly reverted. I reverted again. There is no opposition to change to X Lake as default, JWB, TrueColour support it, Anna supports local usage, no other opinion. TrueColour (talk) 00:13, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

No, Anna has not supported to change the naming convention from Lake XX to XX Lake. She just said: "My position, just to be clear, is that there are plenty of X Lake and plenty of Lake X names across the globe. Both must exist". And this discussion started only less than two days ago. Please be patient and wait for potential other editors to participate in. --Pengyanan (talk) 00:22, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Did anyone say she supported to change the naming convention from Lake XX to XX Lake? Your moves and reverts are really ugly, I now loose my patience with your style. You always say you have no opinion on the matter but prevent other editors to fix obvious issues. Your constant reverts waste time of other editors. You do not even know who made up this convention. It is just plain bad. TrueColour (talk) 00:36, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

If she does not support your proposal, then the consensus has not yet be reached. Again, please be patient. And, please be calm. If you want to know who made up this convention, as I told you, please check the edit history of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese). Help yourself. --Pengyanan (talk) 00:39, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

"If she does not support your proposal" - there are thousands of editors that do not support the change. Your argument is nonsense. You should see the light. Come out of your blindness or darkness or whatever. Face the reality. Aibi Lake numbers were above, here is Tai Lake:

• 32000 http://www.google.com/search?q=%22tai+lake%22
• 22000 http://www.google.com/search?q=%22lake+tai%22

TrueColour (talk) 00:44, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Please try to be civil. Only four or five editors participate in this discussion, and only two (including you yourself) support your proposal, and the discussion only lasts less than two days. Please be patient and wait for at least another several days. --Pengyanan (talk) 00:50, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Three editors take part, JWB, TrueColour, Anna. You always say you have no opinion and that we should settle the matter. Now we settled, and you revert and you call for waiting several days. My patience with your reverts is over. 2 of 3 support "X Lake" as default, 1 supports local usage, which is "X Lake" as shown by the links. So there is no need to wait "another several days". It is not that we only vote, but we all three brought sound arguments, statistics, numbers, and local usage from Chinese media. TrueColour (talk) 00:59, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The "four or five editors" I said include 1) TrueColour, 2) JWB, 3) Anna Frodesiak, 4) Bathrobe, and perhaps 5) Akerbeltz. If you think that the consensus has been reached, do as you please. I am tired of this discussion and your hostile words. --Pengyanan (talk) 01:09, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I missed Akerbeltz and stand corrected. Bathrobe left discussion TrueColour (talk) 01:49, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

X Mountain

X Shan are often translated as X Mountain.

List of X Shan that should NOT be named X Mountain

Please add mountains here and provide evidence.

• Tian Shan
  • neutral, no evidence just feeling. TrueColour (talk) 00:25, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
• Mount Everest Chinese is Qomolangma, official translation is Mount Qomolangma
  • neutral, Mount Qomolangma would be ok to me. TrueColour (talk) 00:25, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Railway naming

There's a discussion at Talk:Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway on whether the names of articles on Chinese railways should be faithful copies of the formal Chinese names ("Wuguang Passanger Railway") or English common names ("Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway"). The current naming conventions say that the Chinese name should take precedence, but this would seem to violate WP:COMMONNAMES, especially for high-profile projects like the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which is known in English almost exclusively by that name and never "Jinghu High-Speed Railway". Please chip in! Jpatokal (talk) 02:28, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment – Anyway, we should use single standard. No matter whether a railway is well known in the West. Python eggs (talk) 02:14, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Yue Chinese vs Cantonese

Back when the "(linguistics)" tag was abandoned for non-linguistics articles, and we decided to follow the Ethnologue convention of "X Chinese" for primary branches of the Chinese language, we left Cantonese/Yue as a possible exception. A few months we came to an impasse as to what it should be called; we did a straw poll to settle on a temporary name, "Cantonese (Yue)", until the placement of Standard Cantonese was settled, and we could get back to it. (Arguing about the placement of Standard Cantonese was complicating the discussion on Yue, and at least one editor voted for the name he didn't like so that we could get it over with an move on to the other article.) Now that the latter article has been moved to Cantonese, several of us feel that the names are confusingly similar and that the temp name needs to be revisited.

For the past month there has been an attempt at further discussion, with a poll in which "Yue Chinese" had a slight lead over "Cantonese (Yue)". I thought that perhaps we could agree to compromise with everyone's second choices, which were mostly "Yue Chinese (Cantonese)" and "Yue (Cantonese)" (the runner-up the last time around) respectively. However, most of the 'Cantonese' side has said they are opposed to any compromise. Are there people here who have not yet joined in the discussion on a permanent name? Should we leave the two articles at Cantonese and Cantonese (Yue), or should they be made more distinct? Cantonese isn't going anywhere; we actually got consensus on that. What about the latter? Status quo temp name? Follow our naming conventions & Ethnologue? A compromise of the two? Something else entirely? kwami (talk) 06:10, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

naming conventions for varieties of Chinese

This would be a good time to review the "X Chinese" convention for the 7 major dialect areas. "X dialects" would better communicate that the article is about the spoken varieties of a whole region rather than an individual variety. As referring to a whole region, this is independent of any controversies over whether some individual dialect should be classified as a "language". "Dialect" is simply the customary English name for Chinese speech varieties; Victor Mair coined "topolect" to be etymologically correct, but general usage has not found it necessary to adopt the new term and continues to use "dialect" to mean "topolect" without any implications on the relation between dialects. --JWB (talk) 21:50, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

But they are not topolects, are they? We make the claim that they are related to each other (ie, that Yue, Wu, Hakka, Mandarin, etc. are all valid taxonomic nodes)—or is that what "topolect" entails? Also, they are often considered to be languages, which would be obscured if we called them "X dialects". If I remember correctly, this is more or less why this terminology had been rejected, though of course people might think differently this time. kwami (talk) 22:54, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

A group is of course not a topolect. It is a set of topolects/dialects. Some might think Shanghainese or the whole Wu group is a language, but nobody maintains every single local Wu dialect is a language, and it is the set of these that "dialects" refers to. --JWB (talk) 03:51, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I have consistently disagreed with the blanket "X Chinese" formula, and contrary to what Kwami claims, looking through the archives it is far from apparent that page moves to "X Chinese" had consensus from involved parties. That aside, I do endorse the use of "Mandarin Chinese", as the use of that string is found commonly in the English language. The rest should be named according to their individual circumstances. I have no problems with "Hakka (language)" either. I make the following proposals for the other branches:

• Wu (topolect)
• Xiang dialects
• Min languages
• Gan dialects
• Yue (topolect) or Cantonese (topolect)
• Hui dialects
• Jin dialects

I base this proposal purely on my subjective experience with the topic and my observations through lengthy debate of involved parties, both on and off Wikipedia. These names do not have a "reliable source" subscribing for the 'proper' use of each name, but neither does the usage of "Hakka (language)" or "Mandarin Chinese" - both of which came about from using some common sense and following general wikipedia guidelines at WP:TITLE. Specifically, I reserve the use of "X dialects" to divisions that are known to be largely mutually intelligible and share a common identity. More complicated topics, such as Wu and Yue, are given the X (topolect) treatment because of the relatively diverse internal divisions, and lack of mutual intelligibility amongst some of its varieties. The reason Min is "Min Languages" is because it has so many mutually unintelligible internal varieties. I realize this may face some opposition from Chinese nationalists, but I somehow doubt that they would provide sound reasoning that we should avoid use of "language" at all costs (note too, that Hakka (language) has been stable and no one seems to have a problem with that). Colipon+(Talk) 01:22, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Ethnologue is just fine as a source. It's what we normally follow on Wikipedia. Though I agree with you, you'll have quite a fight on your hands if you want to claim that Min is several languages rather than a dialect of Chinese. "X topolect" is IMO not good for a title, as almost no-one knows what it means. "X Chinese", on the other hand, is transparent. "X dialects" might get by, but it also has problems; for one, it implies that the dialects do not form a coherent whole. Also, it doesn't really capture the articles, since they cover the languages, not collections of dialects. kwami (talk) 02:30, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't imply the dialects do not form a coherent whole; it is agnostic about it. In some cases there may be controversy about whether they form a cladistic unit. Not sure what you mean by "languages not collections of dialects" since your past position has been that language means Abstand, i.e. collection of dialects.

Regarding Colipon's proposal, I think we should avoid a language-dialect distinction based on mutual intelligibility or some assessment of distance - this leads to endless controversy. I would avoid the count noun "language" entirely except for Ausbau languages, which are based on social opinion and are what non-linguists mean by a "language", and only use "dialect" in its lay common usage meaning what some linguists call "topolect". --JWB (talk) 04:00, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

We normally call languages "languages"; if we call them something else, we imply that they are not languages. This is part of what drove the language-dialect debate.

Yes, when I say Wu etc. are languages, I mean it in the Abstand sense. But that's hardly the same as a collection of dialects; India-n dialects comprise several different language families.

As for whether these may not actually be Abstand languages, well sure, which is why we occasionally update the articles. But conceptually they do represent Abstand languages, and IMO their titles should reflect that. kwami (talk) 05:07, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Looking up again the meaning of Abstand, it is actually defined by the distance / intelligibility criterion. This is difficult to measure, has to be measured on a scale, different studies get different results, and is skewed by preexisting knowledge of the languages. In the study I added to Spoken Chinese#Quantitative similarity, there were many different measures giving different results and they were divided between objective and subjective ones, with genetic distance yet another criterion that was not even mentioned. This is the kind of thing that needs to be discussed at length in articles, not be assumed to be cut and dried as a basis for naming articles. --JWB (talk) 08:52, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but that's the case for nearly all language articles. Very few languages have a national standard; maybe, what, 5%? For all the rest we're going on intelligibility criteria, and that is inherently problematic. Generally we go with the divisions of Ethnologue, unless there's reason to diverge from it. Yue is considered an Abstand language by Ethnologue, and although problems are sometimes noted (notably Ping), generally by other refs as well. kwami (talk) 09:44, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

You are for leaving distinctions based on distance or intelligibility out of Chinese language article titles and I'm agreeing with that. I'm just pointing out that the word "dialect" in actual common usage just means a local speech variety and does not have connotations of a mutual intelligibility test. Every local form of even a major language is a dialect except possibly in the case of an isolated language which has no internal variation at all. --JWB (talk) 19:05, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Dialect says the word has two definitions. One is merely a speech variety as I have been saying. It mentions "topolect" as a subclass of dialect, which eliminates the argument that by using "topolect" we can escape from some constraint of "dialect". The second is a speech variety subordinate to a standard language. Mutual intelligibility is only mentioned much further down the article in "Concepts in dialectology" where it says "Some have attempted" to use the mutual intelligibility criterion and that straightforward application of it is "untenable". --JWB (talk) 19:29, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Apostrophes for disambiguation

Sometimes it is necessary to show where the syllable break lies (e.g. jingao can be jing ao or jin gao). In both cases, the pinyin convention adds a ' symbol to resolve ambiguity, for example, jin'gao vs jing'ao.

According to this site (the best online pinyin resource out there), this is half-wrong -- only the "jing ao" sequence should contain an apostrophe:

Lest anyone misunderstand, let me make this perfectly clear: Under the rules of Hanyu Pinyin, an apostrophe will never come between an n and a g.

The logic here is that the absence of an apostrophe in jingao makes it clear where the syllable boundary lies -- note how the capital of Shandong ("Ji nan") is officially Jǐnán / Jinan, without apostrophe, whereas the capital of Shaanxi ("Xi an") is Xī'ān / Xi'an. The rule is simply to use an apostrophe before all vowel-initial syllables not in word-initial position, even if there is no ambiguity (for example, 可爱 / 可愛 would be written as kě'ài or ke'ai, even though kěài / keai is also unambiguous). -123.168.72.152 (talk) 05:16, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Listing traditional English names alongside Pinyin Romanization for certain mainland cities

I suggest that traditional English names for certain mainland cities should be listed along side the pinyin romanization (perhaps within a parenthesis). This is especially useful for names having a different etymology from the current Pinyin name, which would prevent the readers from easily associating them. For example, "Canton" has been the name for the city of Guangzhou for more then four hundred years and is recorded in all major devinitive English dictionaries. This name is well-known in the English language and so in many other European languages including French, German, Italian, Spanish etc. Unfortunately, the readers would have difficulty associating Canton (and their knowledge about the city) with Guangzhou, the Pinyin name. This proposed practice is highly controversial on the Guangzhou page discussion and had been rejected by some users because this guideline suggested adoption of Pinyin for all mainland cities (although there's a disclaimer asking for the editor's own discretion). Therefore, I propose here to append to the guideline a list of mainland city names with traditional English names that can be displayed side-by-side with the Pinyin Romanization.

A similar practice in botanical nomenclature is called "conserved names", which are traditional names not meeting current "standards" but had been widely used in history.

Criteria regarding admission to the list should be derived to prevent abuse. Melop (talk) 04:59, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

You're gonna need a better example than Canton, Canton directs to a DAB. Liu Tao (talk) 19:10, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

The "traditional" names of most mainland Chinese cities are already mention in the article's first paragraph such as Nanjing, Beijing, Guangzhou, etc. — ASDFGH =] ^talk? 09:09, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

This is a good idea, with the understanding that "traditional English name" is in many cases the Chinese postal spelling name used for about a century for worldwide postal interaction with China. Some cities have more than one well attested alternate name, and generally most should be reflected in most articles that mention the city prominently. Names that redirect to the main page should usually be mentioned prominently on the main page, as a courtesy to readers who follow the redirects. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 16:26, 27 August 2010 (UTC)